0:00:04 > 0:00:07Imagine London in ruins.
0:00:26 > 0:00:30Destruction and terror have haunted this city,
0:00:30 > 0:00:34providing perpetual ruin and rebirth.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44Writers, artists and architects have been inspired to create
0:00:44 > 0:00:49great works of beauty that document a city beset by tragedy.
0:01:04 > 0:01:09# In the city, there's a thousand things I want to say to you
0:01:09 > 0:01:15# But whenever I approach you You make me look a fool
0:01:15 > 0:01:18# I wanna say
0:01:18 > 0:01:20# I wanna tell you
0:01:20 > 0:01:23# About the young ideas
0:01:23 > 0:01:27# But you turn them into fears
0:01:27 > 0:01:30# In the city
0:01:30 > 0:01:31# In the city
0:01:31 > 0:01:36# In the city there's a thousand things I wanna say to you. #
0:01:41 > 0:01:45Artistic interpretations of London across the centuries
0:01:45 > 0:01:47record hundreds of different cities...
0:01:49 > 0:01:54..pictures of London as a city of pageantry and celebration...
0:02:00 > 0:02:05..pictures of London as a city of unruliness and anarchy.
0:02:12 > 0:02:17Here, glory and beauty have always vied
0:02:17 > 0:02:20with stink and suffering for the attention of artists.
0:02:33 > 0:02:36I first drove a crane in '82.
0:02:40 > 0:02:44I climbed up and I sat in the cab and I was very nervous, to put it mildly,
0:02:44 > 0:02:47cos I wasn't particularly fond of heights.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55I'd say the first time I was really quite taken with it,
0:02:55 > 0:02:59looking around thinking, "I'm right in the centre of this.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02"This is a world city. Everybody in the world knows about London."
0:03:02 > 0:03:05And I'm sitting over the top of it, looking around,
0:03:05 > 0:03:07and it is a... Yeah, it's a privilege.
0:03:09 > 0:03:13The city has been there since forever.
0:03:21 > 0:03:24You know, if you look at the old street system in almost any area,
0:03:24 > 0:03:26certainly of central London,
0:03:26 > 0:03:30you still see the little alleyways and little twisty little pieces.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36Just a hotchpotch of planning over the years.
0:03:36 > 0:03:40It gives me a feeling of change because the skeleton was laid down
0:03:40 > 0:03:42years and years and years ago.
0:03:42 > 0:03:44You can still see the shape there
0:03:44 > 0:03:48and the shape, presumably, will stay there forever.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51Each generation has tried to put a stamp on it.
0:03:54 > 0:03:58Throughout history, many have tried to impose beauty and order
0:03:58 > 0:04:00on London's streets,
0:04:00 > 0:04:03but this city has discovered time after time
0:04:03 > 0:04:08its true character lies in its unplanned, chaotic nature.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20London has burned many times across the centuries,
0:04:20 > 0:04:25its day of judgement revisited again and again.
0:04:34 > 0:04:37'All over the Thames with one's face in the wind,
0:04:37 > 0:04:41'you were almost burned with a shower of fire drops.'
0:04:44 > 0:04:49'Above 10,000 houses all in one flame,
0:04:49 > 0:04:53'the noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames,
0:04:53 > 0:04:57'the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people,
0:04:57 > 0:05:03'the fall of towers, houses and churches was like a hideous storm.'
0:05:15 > 0:05:18The Great Fire Of London burned for seven days.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22'The ruins resembling the picture of Troy.
0:05:28 > 0:05:32'London was but is no more.'
0:05:33 > 0:05:38Over 13,000 buildings were destroyed.
0:05:38 > 0:05:41It was the calamity of the age,
0:05:41 > 0:05:45but the smouldering hole at the heart of the city
0:05:45 > 0:05:48would prove to be a huge inspiration.
0:05:48 > 0:05:53Plans were drawn up to bring a new order of beauty to London.
0:05:58 > 0:06:02Architect Christopher Wren proposed a London to rival
0:06:02 > 0:06:05the glories of ancient Rome -
0:06:05 > 0:06:08triumphal avenues and great piazzas.
0:06:10 > 0:06:13At its heart - the new Cathedral of St Paul's.
0:06:16 > 0:06:20Wren would create the first dome to be seen in London.
0:06:22 > 0:06:27It would be a new age of classicism, of harmony and proportion,
0:06:27 > 0:06:31banishing forever the chaos of the old Gothic city.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38St Paul's would be the symbol of a London reborn,
0:06:38 > 0:06:42a great phoenix risen from the flames.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32Had Wren's plans for the whole city been realised,
0:07:32 > 0:07:34the look of London would be very different.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49'Wren's London would have been a noble city.
0:07:50 > 0:07:53But it was not to be.
0:07:53 > 0:07:57The forces of conservatism were too strong.
0:07:57 > 0:08:02And so the streets of the city remain narrow and winding.
0:08:02 > 0:08:05And this is the result.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11The imprint of ancient London defines the map of the modern city.
0:08:16 > 0:08:21The city sheds its skin while the bones stay the same.
0:08:26 > 0:08:28Bank junction is like...
0:08:28 > 0:08:32It's the pulse of London. It's the heartbeat of London.
0:08:42 > 0:08:46You've got the Royal Exchange right in front of you,
0:08:46 > 0:08:50you've got the Bank of England itself on the left,
0:08:50 > 0:08:52and there's so much going on there.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes.
0:08:55 > 0:08:56You just don't actually see it,
0:08:56 > 0:08:59but you can virtually feel it going on there.
0:08:59 > 0:09:02You can envisage the old Roman legions, I suppose,
0:09:02 > 0:09:06crossing the junction there because initially
0:09:06 > 0:09:09it was the old Roman part of London.
0:09:11 > 0:09:14Time just sort of stands still while you're there.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26If you could sort of half shut your eyes, you can see the old traders.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29You know, they're going to Lloyd's of London
0:09:29 > 0:09:32or little coffee houses in the back streets that are still there.
0:09:32 > 0:09:37And you can see behind the windows of all the buildings there
0:09:37 > 0:09:44the clerks with quill pens buzzing away, making lists and charts,
0:09:44 > 0:09:48just generally getting on with the business of London.
0:09:51 > 0:09:53It's the pulse. It's the heartbeat of London,
0:09:53 > 0:09:55virtually in that little area there.
0:09:57 > 0:10:03During the 17th and 18th centuries, new streets and houses spread west.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11Beyond the old city, a very different London was emerging.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22The Georgian London of Bloomsbury and Soho
0:10:22 > 0:10:25would be the definition of urban elegance for the age.
0:10:25 > 0:10:28It drew admirers from around the world.
0:10:31 > 0:10:34'London has many fine open spaces called squares.
0:10:36 > 0:10:41'The centres of these squares are shut in by railings.
0:10:41 > 0:10:44'Those of Soho, of Leicester Fields of the Red Lion
0:10:44 > 0:10:47'and the Golden Square are in this style.'
0:10:58 > 0:11:01Even the image of the Thames would be civilised
0:11:01 > 0:11:05in the eyes of Venice's greatest painter.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16Canaletto's picture of London is one
0:11:16 > 0:11:19of a beautiful city on the water,
0:11:19 > 0:11:22refined and aesthetically perfect.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30But Canaletto's London is pure artifice.
0:11:32 > 0:11:37He moved elements of the city around to suit his compositions.
0:11:40 > 0:11:44These are pictures of an idealised London.
0:11:44 > 0:11:47They are the dream pictures of their age, commissioned by Londoners
0:11:47 > 0:11:50who yearned for their city to be the new Venice.
0:11:55 > 0:11:59Although Canaletto spent almost a decade in this city,
0:11:59 > 0:12:04he rarely strayed from its grand thoroughfares and facades.
0:12:09 > 0:12:11Coming!
0:12:11 > 0:12:13How are you?
0:12:13 > 0:12:17Other artists were drawn instead to the toil and sweat of London.
0:12:26 > 0:12:31Covent Garden was home to a raucous meat, vegetable and flower market
0:12:31 > 0:12:33that survived into the 1970s.
0:12:38 > 0:12:41This is the New Covent Garden, which is in Vauxhall.
0:12:41 > 0:12:46This moved here in 1974 from the Old Covent Garden,
0:12:46 > 0:12:48which is in Covent Garden, not to get mixed up
0:12:48 > 0:12:52between the New Covent Garden and the Old Covent Garden.
0:12:52 > 0:12:58The spirit, I think, still remains here because of the people.
0:12:58 > 0:13:01Morning. How are you?
0:13:01 > 0:13:04Got Tommy Coopers in your team got beat every week just like that!
0:13:04 > 0:13:05LAURA LAUGHS
0:13:05 > 0:13:08The banter that goes on and the sexist remarks, which I love,
0:13:08 > 0:13:10I know I shouldn't say that but I love it,
0:13:10 > 0:13:13it's part of Covent Garden. It's Old London.
0:13:17 > 0:13:19My great-great-grandmother,
0:13:19 > 0:13:22she used to sell violets on the streets of London,
0:13:22 > 0:13:25like the old-fashioned ones you see in Mary Poppins,
0:13:25 > 0:13:27the old lady that's selling violets on the streets.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31She would have gone early in the morning to the Old Covent Garden
0:13:31 > 0:13:35and I dare say she had a bit of a whale of a time there.
0:13:36 > 0:13:41Covent Garden is in my blood and I just feel like it's my home.
0:13:41 > 0:13:43It's like being home.
0:13:43 > 0:13:48I can feel the atmosphere of how it must have been in the old days.
0:13:48 > 0:13:52It must have been dirty, smelly, busy
0:13:52 > 0:13:55but absolutely full of people that were just alive.
0:13:55 > 0:14:00Really, really alive in the mornings, and shouting and selling
0:14:00 > 0:14:02and, you know, trying to barter
0:14:02 > 0:14:06and just the whole thing must have been absolutely magical, really.
0:14:21 > 0:14:26Around Covent Garden Market grew up a world of theatres,
0:14:26 > 0:14:31brothels and coffee houses that attracted writers and artists.
0:14:35 > 0:14:40Urban life in the raw was to become the subject matter of art.
0:14:44 > 0:14:47Painter William Hogarth rejected artifice
0:14:47 > 0:14:50to create a new picture of London.
0:14:53 > 0:14:58In a series of paintings from 1736 entitled Four Times Of The Day,
0:14:58 > 0:15:02Hogarth paints London as a divided city,
0:15:02 > 0:15:07where high society rubbed shoulders with London's chaotic grimy truths.
0:15:09 > 0:15:14It begins on a freezing morning in Covent Garden.
0:15:16 > 0:15:20An affluent lady makes her way to church past drunken revellers
0:15:20 > 0:15:23staggering home from the night before.
0:15:25 > 0:15:27She is oblivious to the huddle of beggars
0:15:27 > 0:15:30and whores warming themselves by the fire.
0:15:36 > 0:15:39At noon, the notorious slum district
0:15:39 > 0:15:42of St Giles is a divided world.
0:15:44 > 0:15:48On the left, a group of fashionable Huguenot immigrants
0:15:48 > 0:15:50pour out of the French church.
0:15:52 > 0:15:55On the other side of the street are a group of well fed
0:15:55 > 0:15:57but slovenly English peasants.
0:15:57 > 0:16:01The only thing that connects these two worlds is a dead cat
0:16:01 > 0:16:03that lies across the kerb.
0:16:08 > 0:16:13Evening takes place at Sadler's Wells Theatre on the edge of town.
0:16:14 > 0:16:19A young family's attempts to escape the crush and heat of the city
0:16:19 > 0:16:23have ended, ironically, in exhaustion and frustration.
0:16:25 > 0:16:30Finally, Hogarth takes us at night to Charing Cross.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33A chamber pot is emptied out of a high window.
0:16:36 > 0:16:40Its contents fall towards a drunk Freemason as he staggers home.
0:16:46 > 0:16:49His light illuminates a group of homeless children
0:16:49 > 0:16:52who huddle against a wall trying to sleep.
0:16:52 > 0:16:55Balanced precariously above their heads -
0:16:55 > 0:16:59bowls of fresh blood on the barber surgeon's windowsill.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16Hogarth renamed the very streets of the city after
0:17:16 > 0:17:21the alcoholic drinks that were fuelling such debauchery and cheer.
0:17:21 > 0:17:23A warning of the evils of gin
0:17:23 > 0:17:26and a celebration of the healthy properties of beer.
0:17:28 > 0:17:32Well, there's one particular smell I don't like.
0:17:32 > 0:17:34It's this dampness that comes
0:17:34 > 0:17:35at the end of the weekend,
0:17:35 > 0:17:37at the back of these restaurants
0:17:37 > 0:17:39where everything's been removed.
0:17:39 > 0:17:42It's a sort of... I don't know how to describe it,
0:17:42 > 0:17:44like a stale grease, food.
0:17:44 > 0:17:48It's a very depressing smell, you know what I mean?
0:17:49 > 0:17:52Rotten meat, rotten meat, yeah.
0:17:53 > 0:17:56I don't like dead rats. I don't mind live ones.
0:17:56 > 0:17:59Something about dead rats, I don't know why.
0:18:03 > 0:18:05I hope he's not doing what I think he is,
0:18:05 > 0:18:08otherwise I'll have to go and to arrest him.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11Well, there's a good chance that is probably urine, yeah.
0:18:11 > 0:18:14You can always tell if it's in a corner, you know what I mean.
0:18:14 > 0:18:17If it's hidden away in a corner, that urine, you know what I mean?
0:18:17 > 0:18:19That, I would imagine...
0:18:19 > 0:18:21HE SNIFFS
0:18:21 > 0:18:23..I should say it's Coca Cola.
0:18:26 > 0:18:28I remember once a girl was so sick walking through,
0:18:28 > 0:18:30she was so bad, she kept getting sick.
0:18:30 > 0:18:33I said, "Hang on a minute, darling," and I gave her a bag.
0:18:33 > 0:18:34I said, "You do the rest."
0:18:35 > 0:18:39Yeah, blood was actually found somewhere around here.
0:18:39 > 0:18:41He's having an argument with his girlfriend,
0:18:41 > 0:18:45he broke a bottle and stabbed himself and got up and walked off.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47It's mayhem, you know,
0:18:47 > 0:18:49some really good punch-ups, you know what I mean,
0:18:49 > 0:18:51and then they just go home.
0:18:51 > 0:18:54They let off steam and I come here the next morning
0:18:54 > 0:18:56and try to work out what it was, who won.
0:18:57 > 0:19:02Hogarth was the first artist to see the streets of London as theatre.
0:19:02 > 0:19:05Their grime and detritus,
0:19:05 > 0:19:09grotesque characters and events telling a very particular story.
0:19:09 > 0:19:15The seamier climate of the city streets has inspired ever since.
0:19:15 > 0:19:19And it's fun because you're watching other people's behaviour.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22Cos it's such a job, it gets into your blood.
0:19:22 > 0:19:24People will tell you that, you know.
0:19:24 > 0:19:27This and the refuge, it gets inside you.
0:19:27 > 0:19:29It's inside you. You find it hard to do anything else.
0:19:49 > 0:19:53At the end of the 18th century, poet and visionary William Blake
0:19:53 > 0:19:59prophesied a city where awfulness and wonder becomes the same thing.
0:20:00 > 0:20:04Industrialisation, the machine age and the railways
0:20:04 > 0:20:08would transform the look and the experience of the city.
0:20:10 > 0:20:14No more the beautiful neo-classical Georgian city,
0:20:14 > 0:20:17London was to become a huge sprawling metropolis.
0:20:17 > 0:20:20One million inhabitants in 1800
0:20:20 > 0:20:23would become 6.5 million a century later.
0:20:25 > 0:20:28Now the truest pictures of London would find beauty
0:20:28 > 0:20:32and inspiration in the most horrific qualities of the city.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55This immense view of the sprawling metropolis was billed as
0:20:55 > 0:20:59an illusionistic scene designed to thrill and excite.
0:21:00 > 0:21:05Once thought lost forever, it was discovered in America in 1940,
0:21:05 > 0:21:08being used to line a crate of firearms.
0:21:17 > 0:21:21Above the city, all seems wondrous,
0:21:21 > 0:21:24but at street level it was out of control again.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31'The different departments of life are jumbled together.
0:21:31 > 0:21:34'The hod carrier, the low mechanic, the tapster, the publican,
0:21:34 > 0:21:38'the shopkeeper, the petty fogger, the citizen and courtier
0:21:38 > 0:21:42'all tread upon the kibes of one another.
0:21:42 > 0:21:45'They are seen everywhere rambling, riding, rolling, rushing,
0:21:45 > 0:21:47'jostling, mixing, bouncing, cracking
0:21:47 > 0:21:51'and crashing in one vile ferment of stupidity and corruption.'
0:22:06 > 0:22:10For the last 200 years, many artists have tried
0:22:10 > 0:22:14to contain London in one vast image or sprawling work.
0:22:16 > 0:22:19I wanted to express my fascination with the city...
0:22:22 > 0:22:24..its contradictions,
0:22:24 > 0:22:26its intricacy...
0:22:29 > 0:22:31..its mass of people,
0:22:31 > 0:22:35all living their separate and sometimes communal lives.
0:22:35 > 0:22:39The Isles of Slough, trading estate.
0:22:43 > 0:22:47I made London into an island for a number of reasons.
0:22:47 > 0:22:49Britain is an island.
0:22:49 > 0:22:51It's a collection of islands.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57It informs our national psyche.
0:22:59 > 0:23:04It's a wry joke on London's self-importance.
0:23:04 > 0:23:09The Isle of Woking, dormitory island town.
0:23:11 > 0:23:15It's an image of both order and chaos,
0:23:15 > 0:23:18and, at times,
0:23:18 > 0:23:23an image of where the order descends into chaos.
0:23:24 > 0:23:29Making it, I was trying to say how bewildering it can be,
0:23:29 > 0:23:32sometimes, to live in the place.
0:23:33 > 0:23:39The infinite amounts of stories and lives and histories that,
0:23:39 > 0:23:43you know, ten million people in a city experience.
0:23:45 > 0:23:49'The early clerk population are fast pouring into the city,
0:23:49 > 0:23:53'middle-aged men whose salaries have by no means
0:23:53 > 0:23:58'increased in the same proportion as their families, plod steadily along,
0:23:58 > 0:24:02'apparently with no object in view but the counting house,
0:24:02 > 0:24:07'knowing by sight almost everybody they meet or overtake.
0:24:07 > 0:24:10'For they have seen them every morning, Sunday excepted,
0:24:10 > 0:24:15'during the last 20 years but speaking to no-one.'
0:24:28 > 0:24:34On the 16th October 1834, the Houses of Parliament burned to the ground.
0:24:35 > 0:24:39Once again, it was as though the day of judgement
0:24:39 > 0:24:40for the city was at hand.
0:24:41 > 0:24:46Among the astonished crowd was a Cockney artist named
0:24:46 > 0:24:49Joseph Mallord William Turner.
0:24:51 > 0:24:56Sketchbook in hand, he feverishly captured the scene as it happened.
0:25:01 > 0:25:04Turner became obsessed with the event,
0:25:04 > 0:25:07and the sketches resulted in an epic oil painting.
0:25:16 > 0:25:20And, as before, out of destruction would arise
0:25:20 > 0:25:23a symbol of London's state of mind.
0:25:23 > 0:25:28William Kent imagined the Houses of Parliament looking like this.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34A classical building, symbolic of order and harmony
0:25:34 > 0:25:38might have radically changed how the look of the city developed.
0:25:45 > 0:25:50But it's no surprise that, once more, dreams of order were thwarted.
0:25:52 > 0:25:56Sir Charles Barrie's intricate Gothic revival design
0:25:56 > 0:25:57was far more suited
0:25:57 > 0:26:01to a metropolis that was becoming ever more chaotic and dark...
0:26:10 > 0:26:12..a city of the night.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32'The streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory,
0:26:32 > 0:26:37'should be seen on a dark, dull murky winter's night'
0:26:37 > 0:26:41'when the heavy, lazy mist which hangs over every object
0:26:41 > 0:26:43'makes the gas lamps look brighter
0:26:43 > 0:26:47'and the brilliantly lighted shops more splendid
0:26:47 > 0:26:51'from the contrast they present to the darkness around.'
0:26:55 > 0:26:59'London's a very quiet place at night, very ethereal -
0:26:59 > 0:27:01is that the right word?
0:27:06 > 0:27:09We all have our own favourite spots and they're usually
0:27:09 > 0:27:13sort of dotted around London at different, different positions.
0:27:17 > 0:27:20You can't obviously drive a cab for eight or nine hours
0:27:20 > 0:27:24continuously and you have to find a little quiet spot.
0:27:29 > 0:27:31There's a small church called St Mary's Church,
0:27:31 > 0:27:37in Battersea Church Road, and it lies just on the bend of a river.
0:27:37 > 0:27:41You can see cormorants, seagulls, terns,
0:27:41 > 0:27:45feeding and just sitting there themselves as well.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48You can see the large planes going over on their way to
0:27:48 > 0:27:51London Airport but there's no noise at all,
0:27:51 > 0:27:54and it's just like a little part of the countryside.
0:27:54 > 0:27:56I love the tranquillity of it.
0:28:19 > 0:28:24You can watch the river slowly go past like it must have done for millions of years.
0:28:37 > 0:28:41'When the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry...
0:28:43 > 0:28:46'..tall chimneys become campanili
0:28:46 > 0:28:49'and the warehouses are palaces in the night.
0:28:49 > 0:28:55'And the whole city hangs in the heavens and fairyland is before us.'
0:29:01 > 0:29:07American painter James McNeill Whistler faced tough criticism
0:29:07 > 0:29:13for these near abstract night-time images but, like so many artists,
0:29:13 > 0:29:16his picture of 19th-century London
0:29:16 > 0:29:20was of a city cloaked and impenetrable.
0:29:26 > 0:29:33# A foggy day in London town
0:29:33 > 0:29:39# Had me low and it had me down
0:29:39 > 0:29:46# I view the morning with much alarm
0:29:46 > 0:29:49# The British Museum
0:29:49 > 0:29:52# It lost its charm... #
0:30:04 > 0:30:10These smoggy pea-soupers were a combination of fog and smoke
0:30:10 > 0:30:14from the increasingly large industry that lined the river.
0:30:14 > 0:30:18Pea-soupers were commonplace until the 1950s.
0:30:20 > 0:30:24In these fogs, all the grime and glory
0:30:24 > 0:30:27of Victorian London was contained.
0:30:27 > 0:30:31They have become the defining image of the city.
0:30:39 > 0:30:41In the late 19th century,
0:30:41 > 0:30:45two celebrated men trod the fogbound streets of London.
0:30:50 > 0:30:56One was Claude Monet, the painter who sought beauty in the world,
0:30:56 > 0:30:59the other a philosopher, Karl Marx,
0:30:59 > 0:31:04who had a mission to expose poverty, suffering and injustice.
0:31:08 > 0:31:12Two very different pictures of London.
0:31:16 > 0:31:21'Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city.
0:31:21 > 0:31:25'It is the fog that gives it its marvellous breadth.
0:31:25 > 0:31:31'Its regular massive blocks become grandiose in this mysterious cloak.'
0:31:33 > 0:31:36For Monet, the smoggy conditions made London beautiful.
0:31:42 > 0:31:45For Marx, they made it hellish.
0:31:46 > 0:31:49The source of the acrid smog was the factories
0:31:49 > 0:31:54of Whitechapel, Stepney and Bethnal Green in the East End.
0:31:54 > 0:31:58The living conditions in this notorious district
0:31:58 > 0:32:02represented all that Marx and his followers railed against.
0:32:06 > 0:32:10Such contrasting views defined the picture of London
0:32:10 > 0:32:13in the late 19th century.
0:32:13 > 0:32:15'The Thames is so wonderful
0:32:15 > 0:32:19'because the mist is always changing its shapes and colours,
0:32:19 > 0:32:23'always making its light mysterious and building palaces of cloud
0:32:23 > 0:32:28'out of mere Parliament Houses with their jags and turrets.'
0:32:28 > 0:32:32'When the mist collaborates with night and rain,
0:32:32 > 0:32:34'the masterpiece is created.'
0:32:38 > 0:32:42'When I see these dirty tattered children with their bright eyes
0:32:42 > 0:32:45'and angel faces, I am filled with apprehension,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48'as if I were seeing drowning people.
0:32:50 > 0:32:51'How to save them?
0:32:53 > 0:32:55'Which to save first?'
0:33:02 > 0:33:06And the squalor of the East End collided with the beauty
0:33:06 > 0:33:09of the fogbound Thames at London's docks -
0:33:09 > 0:33:12around the turn of the 20th century,
0:33:12 > 0:33:15the busiest, most important port on the planet.
0:33:17 > 0:33:21It's a world now almost entirely lost.
0:33:27 > 0:33:30You see the river at night or early in the morning
0:33:30 > 0:33:32and with no other traffic about,
0:33:32 > 0:33:37and you squint and close your eyes to all the tower blocks and the modern buildings.
0:33:37 > 0:33:41Some of the river frontage hasn't changed at all
0:33:41 > 0:33:43in many hundreds of years.
0:33:53 > 0:33:57'This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks
0:33:57 > 0:33:59'recalls a jungle by the confused,
0:33:59 > 0:34:03'varied and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore.
0:34:05 > 0:34:07'They hide the depths of London's
0:34:07 > 0:34:11'infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life.'
0:34:15 > 0:34:18Joseph Conrad was a seafaring man and knew the grim life
0:34:18 > 0:34:21concealed behind the docks too well to glorify it.
0:34:25 > 0:34:28But he could not deny the romance of the place.
0:34:33 > 0:34:39'When one talks of the Thames Docks, beauty is a vain word,
0:34:39 > 0:34:43'but romance has lived too long upon this river not to have thrown
0:34:43 > 0:34:45'a mantle of glamour upon its banks.'
0:34:51 > 0:34:54The river is a special place at any time of the day
0:34:54 > 0:34:58but the middle of the winter when it's pitch black, when there's a fog
0:34:58 > 0:35:02and a mist hanging over the river, it can be a really eerie place.
0:35:11 > 0:35:17The sublime feeling of wonder mixed with fear drew artists to London.
0:35:19 > 0:35:23It was a city both aesthetically pleasing and horrific.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36This is the city that would launch the career of Alfred Hitchcock.
0:35:38 > 0:35:42Everything that would become known as Hitchcockian,
0:35:42 > 0:35:45dread, apprehension, excitement and thrill,
0:35:45 > 0:35:49was contained in the world of the London fog.
0:36:10 > 0:36:14This great vision of the Thames Embankment is of a London
0:36:14 > 0:36:16engulfed by the fires of hell.
0:36:21 > 0:36:26To imagine London as a blasted, ruined, biblical city
0:36:26 > 0:36:29became fashionable in the 19th century...
0:36:46 > 0:36:49..as if London had at last taken its place amongst
0:36:49 > 0:36:50the great cities of antiquity.
0:37:11 > 0:37:13'We had one or two nights in Whitechapel,
0:37:13 > 0:37:16'duly attended by police in plain clothes.
0:37:18 > 0:37:22'We explored the docks, we visited the night refuges,
0:37:22 > 0:37:24'we journeyed up and down the river.'
0:37:28 > 0:37:31Something to read on the train apart from the Evening Standard.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34Free Evening Standard.
0:37:34 > 0:37:38I did sell one once. I remember it well.
0:37:38 > 0:37:43'Dore's constant remark was that London is not ugly.'
0:37:45 > 0:37:49When you've got nowhere to go like for me for instance,
0:37:49 > 0:37:51I'd walk the streets.
0:37:51 > 0:37:54I wouldn't settle anywhere. I'd sleep in the day.
0:37:54 > 0:37:58But during the night I'd walk. If I'd nowhere to go, I'd walk.
0:37:58 > 0:38:02And the night isn't that long and actually it's quite beautiful.
0:38:03 > 0:38:06And you'd see the sun come up,
0:38:06 > 0:38:09you'd see the birds, you hear them.
0:38:09 > 0:38:11It is a beauty.
0:38:14 > 0:38:18You're seeing things that people who are shutting their doors at night,
0:38:18 > 0:38:21and have to go to work in the morning, don't see.
0:38:28 > 0:38:32With these images, artist Gustave Dore created a defining picture
0:38:32 > 0:38:35of 19th-century London and its East End.
0:38:38 > 0:38:42Gothic, tightly packed, smoky, a place of poverty,
0:38:42 > 0:38:45where the dispossessed, the newly arrived, scraped a living
0:38:45 > 0:38:47on the dark dangerous streets.
0:38:57 > 0:39:01But a recent discovery in the cellar of an old school in Hackney
0:39:01 > 0:39:04several years ago reveals a very different
0:39:04 > 0:39:08and proud picture of London's East End -
0:39:08 > 0:39:11a collection of 2,000 glass plate negatives
0:39:11 > 0:39:16dating from the 1860s, from a portrait studio in Hackney.
0:39:21 > 0:39:26In contrast to Gustave Dore's East End, these are images of hope,
0:39:26 > 0:39:28of dreams, playful and frivolous.
0:39:32 > 0:39:36They are the work of photographer Arthur Eason.
0:39:57 > 0:40:01Just brush the hair down a bit there. You've been a bit windswept.
0:40:01 > 0:40:04- And you're going to keep the hat on? You always keep it on?- All the time.
0:40:04 > 0:40:06- Even at bedtime, Mum.- Even in bed.
0:40:06 > 0:40:08Even in bed, really?
0:40:16 > 0:40:21My family first came to London in the 1950s from Barbados.
0:40:21 > 0:40:24And we're getting the smiles happening, too. This is good.
0:40:24 > 0:40:26We were born in Hackney, brought up in Hackney,
0:40:26 > 0:40:29we were used to this big community, this like big family of people.
0:40:29 > 0:40:33Pretend you're enjoying yourself. That's good. OK.
0:40:33 > 0:40:37Let's have you relax a little bit, shall we?
0:40:37 > 0:40:41I don't think I could really pigeonhole Hackney people as such.
0:40:41 > 0:40:44They're far too varied, far too many ethnic groups,
0:40:44 > 0:40:48different types of people here for all sorts of different reasons.
0:40:48 > 0:40:51You're very serious over there! WOMEN LAUGH
0:40:51 > 0:40:52That's better. OK.
0:40:52 > 0:40:56I guess if there's one consistency at all,
0:40:56 > 0:41:01it would be the fact that they're not from here originally.
0:41:03 > 0:41:07There are far more people passing through the area, on their way
0:41:07 > 0:41:11to other places, or settling here, but in general haven't started here.
0:41:16 > 0:41:20And as the 20th century dawned, the earliest images of London captured
0:41:20 > 0:41:24on moving film reveal a fast-paced city, chaotic and dramatic.
0:41:26 > 0:41:30# Have you heard the latest thing in rhythm?
0:41:30 > 0:41:34# It's a dream and it's got all London in a daze
0:41:34 > 0:41:39# Got the population swinging rhythm
0:41:39 > 0:41:45# And you're gonna crave this dancing craze
0:41:45 > 0:41:47# Let's swing London rhythm
0:41:47 > 0:41:54# Let's bring London rhythm back into town
0:41:54 > 0:41:57# Come on, babe, let's trot 'em
0:41:57 > 0:41:59# Ain't that music got 'em
0:41:59 > 0:42:01# Dancing is delight
0:42:01 > 0:42:04# While you're holding me so tight
0:42:04 > 0:42:06# Stomp that London rhythm
0:42:06 > 0:42:10# Romp that London rhythm, wait!
0:42:10 > 0:42:13# Mooch around
0:42:13 > 0:42:15# We'll begin at seven
0:42:15 > 0:42:18# Gladding straight for heaven
0:42:18 > 0:42:23# London rhythm is in town tonight. #
0:42:23 > 0:42:27The rhythm and speed of this increasingly mechanised city
0:42:27 > 0:42:30was to inspire the painter Christopher Nevinson.
0:42:32 > 0:42:36He sees London as a crowded interconnected structure,
0:42:36 > 0:42:38the brain of the planet.
0:42:48 > 0:42:52Throughout the 20th century, London was a city caught between
0:42:52 > 0:42:53the past and the future.
0:42:55 > 0:42:57Many artists found inspiration
0:42:57 > 0:43:01in the buildings and traditions that survived around them.
0:43:03 > 0:43:07Others were inspired by the emerging modern city
0:43:07 > 0:43:10and imagined what it might be like in the future.
0:43:19 > 0:43:24Film director Gaston Quiribet created special effects to
0:43:24 > 0:43:29transport the viewer through time in this incredible 1924 film.
0:43:33 > 0:43:36It is the story of a machine that could see into the future.
0:43:39 > 0:43:43Its inventor turns its gaze on London to reveal a hi-tech,
0:43:43 > 0:43:44but troubled city.
0:43:47 > 0:43:49High water levels flood Trafalgar Square...
0:43:53 > 0:43:56..monorails across Tower Bridge...
0:44:01 > 0:44:04..and, hauntingly, the Houses of Parliament
0:44:04 > 0:44:07adorned with a German eagle,
0:44:07 > 0:44:10presumably following an invasion of Britain.
0:44:19 > 0:44:22In 1940, London burned once more.
0:44:26 > 0:44:31'You can have little understanding of the life in London these days.
0:44:31 > 0:44:35'There are no words to describe the thing that is happening.
0:44:35 > 0:44:36'The courage of the people,
0:44:36 > 0:44:39'the flash and roar of the guns rolling down the streets,
0:44:39 > 0:44:42'the stench of the air raid shelters.
0:44:42 > 0:44:45'In three or four hours, people must get up and go to work,
0:44:45 > 0:44:48'just as though they had a full night's rest,
0:44:48 > 0:44:51'free from the rumble of guns, and the wonder that comes
0:44:51 > 0:44:54'when they wake and listen in the dead hours of the night.'
0:45:01 > 0:45:05Artist Henry Moore descended below the inferno
0:45:05 > 0:45:06into a new level of hell...
0:45:08 > 0:45:13..a subterranean world of Londoners more fearful than ever before.
0:45:15 > 0:45:19Moore captured the raw human emotion of the Blitz.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24'The only thing at all like those shelters that
0:45:24 > 0:45:27'I could think of was the hold of the slave ship,
0:45:27 > 0:45:30'on its way from Africa to America,
0:45:30 > 0:45:33'full of hundreds and hundreds of people who were
0:45:33 > 0:45:38'having things done to them that they were quite powerless to resist.
0:45:48 > 0:45:51'They were a bit like the chorus in a Greek drama
0:45:51 > 0:45:55'telling us about the violence we don't actually witness.'
0:46:07 > 0:46:10'At dawn, Londoners come oozing out of the ground,
0:46:10 > 0:46:13'tired and red-eyed and sleepy.
0:46:13 > 0:46:14'The fires are dying down.
0:46:14 > 0:46:17'I saw them turn into their own street to see
0:46:17 > 0:46:20'if their house was still standing.'
0:46:23 > 0:46:29'I wandered in the desolate ruins of my old squares, gashed, dismantled.
0:46:29 > 0:46:32'The old red bricks, all white powder,
0:46:32 > 0:46:36'something like a builders' yard.
0:46:36 > 0:46:40'Grey dirt and broken windows, sightseers,
0:46:40 > 0:46:44'all that completeness ravished and demolished.'
0:46:50 > 0:46:55As before, this was an opportunity to sweep away
0:46:55 > 0:46:57the old and build London anew.
0:47:03 > 0:47:05Throughout the history of London,
0:47:05 > 0:47:08the building of tall towers had been proposed.
0:47:11 > 0:47:13As early as 1852,
0:47:13 > 0:47:17a plan to reconstruct the Crystal Palace as a 1,000-foot tower
0:47:17 > 0:47:20might have given us the world's first skyscraper.
0:47:28 > 0:47:32These are 1866 designs for towers on the Embankment...
0:47:41 > 0:47:45..this, the design for a monumental tower in Westminster in 1904.
0:47:50 > 0:47:52In 1918, a new tower was proposed
0:47:52 > 0:47:56for Selfridges department store in Oxford Street.
0:48:04 > 0:48:06And in 1951...
0:48:09 > 0:48:15..this Orwellian plan proposed to transform London's Southbank.
0:48:17 > 0:48:19But in 1956,
0:48:19 > 0:48:23St Paul's Cathedral was still the tallest building in London.
0:48:23 > 0:48:27That year, the government suspended
0:48:27 > 0:48:29the 1888 London Building Act
0:48:29 > 0:48:33restricting the height of buildings to 100 feet,
0:48:33 > 0:48:36the height of a fireman's ladder.
0:48:36 > 0:48:41The decision would transform the city's skyline.
0:48:41 > 0:48:46But the new order of modernism was not to every taste.
0:48:53 > 0:48:55For the poet John Betjeman,
0:48:55 > 0:48:58it wasn't the future of London that inspired.
0:48:58 > 0:49:00It was the past.
0:49:09 > 0:49:13'Snow falls in the buffet of Aldersgate Station,
0:49:13 > 0:49:17'soot hangs in the tunnel in clouds of steam.
0:49:17 > 0:49:21'City of London, before the next desecration,
0:49:21 > 0:49:25'let your steepled forest of churches be my theme.
0:49:26 > 0:49:31'Sunday silence with every street a dead street,
0:49:31 > 0:49:35'alley and courtyard empty and cobbled mews.
0:49:35 > 0:49:39'Till tingle tang the bell of Mildred's Bread Street
0:49:39 > 0:49:43'summoned the sermon taster to high box views
0:49:43 > 0:49:47'and neighbouring towers and spirelets joined the ringing
0:49:47 > 0:49:50'with answering echoes from heavy commercial walls
0:49:50 > 0:49:53'till all were drowned as the sailing clouds
0:49:53 > 0:49:58'went singing on the roaring flood of a 12-voiced peel from Paul's.
0:50:00 > 0:50:04'Snow falls in the buffet of Aldersgate Station,
0:50:04 > 0:50:09'toiling and dimmed from Moorgate Street past the train.
0:50:09 > 0:50:13'For us of the steam and the gas light, the lost generation,
0:50:13 > 0:50:17'the new white cliffs of the city are built in vain.'
0:50:34 > 0:50:36Over the next few decades,
0:50:36 > 0:50:40much of 18th and 19th-century London came under attack.
0:50:41 > 0:50:45Tower blocks, housing estates, ring roads
0:50:45 > 0:50:49and highways transformed London into a sometimes brutal modern city.
0:50:52 > 0:50:55But it was no less inspirational to artists.
0:50:55 > 0:51:01Writer J G Ballard was in thrall to a concrete world of the future.
0:51:01 > 0:51:05In it were stories, possibilities, new ways of looking at the world.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16'I was moving through the terrain of inner urban sprawl,
0:51:16 > 0:51:19'a geography of sensory deprivation.
0:51:19 > 0:51:21'A zone of dual carriageways
0:51:21 > 0:51:23'and petrol stations,
0:51:23 > 0:51:27'business parks and signposts to Heathrow.
0:51:27 > 0:51:32'CCTV cameras crouched over warehouse gates.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36'The traffic signals presided like small-minded deities
0:51:36 > 0:51:38'over their deserted crossroads,
0:51:38 > 0:51:41'the entire defensive landscape
0:51:41 > 0:51:43'was waiting for a crime to be committed.'
0:51:47 > 0:51:55# If I had my life to live over
0:51:55 > 0:52:02# I would still do the same things again
0:52:02 > 0:52:05# I would still like to roam
0:52:05 > 0:52:09# To the place I call home
0:52:09 > 0:52:15# Where memories will ever remain
0:52:15 > 0:52:21# I'll meet you when school days are over
0:52:21 > 0:52:27# And we'll stroll down the lane we once knew
0:52:27 > 0:52:35# If I had my life to live over again
0:52:35 > 0:52:41# I would still fall in love with you. #
0:52:43 > 0:52:49I'm a Londoner and I was born in Blackfriars in 1928.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54My husband helped to build Thamesmead. He was an erector.
0:52:54 > 0:52:58I used to come down here and see him, like, on a Friday,
0:52:58 > 0:53:00and then my daughter moved down here
0:53:00 > 0:53:03and then I used to come down every weekend to see her
0:53:03 > 0:53:07and it was lovely, really lovely.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09I didn't think it was ugly.
0:53:11 > 0:53:13The kids were in the paddling pool, playing.
0:53:17 > 0:53:19I still like it.
0:53:20 > 0:53:22I still like it,
0:53:22 > 0:53:25but it's just deteriorating.
0:53:35 > 0:53:38I'd love to live at the top of one of those.
0:53:38 > 0:53:40That's where I'd like to live.
0:53:43 > 0:53:48Over the last half-century, London has become a city of towers,
0:53:48 > 0:53:51towers to live in and towers to work in.
0:53:57 > 0:54:01And, once more, a new symbol of London would rise out of
0:54:01 > 0:54:04a moment of destruction in the heart of the old city.
0:54:14 > 0:54:18'A 15-year-old girl was one of two people killed last night
0:54:18 > 0:54:22'by a terrorist car bomb in central London. 91 were injured.'
0:54:22 > 0:54:25'A car bomb went off in a vehicle parked outside
0:54:25 > 0:54:27'a row of banks in the St Mary Axe area of the city.
0:54:27 > 0:54:30'Three people are reported to have been killed.'
0:54:30 > 0:54:33'..the biggest bombs ever planted on the British mainland caused
0:54:33 > 0:54:36'millions of pounds worth of damage. Buildings may have to be demolished.
0:54:36 > 0:54:39'Windows were shattered hundreds of yards away.'
0:54:39 > 0:54:41The old Baltic Exchange was beyond repair
0:54:41 > 0:54:44and something would have to built in its place.
0:54:56 > 0:55:00Architect Norman Foster's building at 30 St Mary Axe,
0:55:00 > 0:55:05now affectionately known as The Gherkin, was completed in 2003.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13It has become a beacon for the age,
0:55:13 > 0:55:17the latest image of a city ever changing.
0:55:25 > 0:55:29I lived at 21 Petticoat Tower, Petticoat Square Estate.
0:55:33 > 0:55:37I've lived in the area of Petticoat Lane all my life
0:55:37 > 0:55:41and have loved living in the area,
0:55:41 > 0:55:45seen so many things coming and going,
0:55:45 > 0:55:49and have grown up alongside of what's going on.
0:55:51 > 0:55:55I've seen many changes from living up so high.
0:55:55 > 0:56:00The city has to live and breathe.
0:56:00 > 0:56:06And, by that, I mean the city is the lifeblood
0:56:06 > 0:56:11and what goes on here in the city, in these office blocks...
0:56:12 > 0:56:20..some people might refer to then as monstrosities but they're not.
0:56:20 > 0:56:24Someone like myself, that takes every opportunity of looking out,
0:56:24 > 0:56:27I can only see beauty there.
0:56:30 > 0:56:33That, to me, is what being a Londoner's all about.
0:56:54 > 0:56:56Knowing that you're coming into work
0:56:56 > 0:57:02and be confronted with this view is always a pleasure.
0:57:14 > 0:57:15I lost my wife two years ago.
0:57:17 > 0:57:19I used to love taking my wife
0:57:19 > 0:57:23to the places that I'd been to that she'd heard me talk about,
0:57:23 > 0:57:26to the Gherkin, to the wibbly-wobbly bridge,
0:57:26 > 0:57:30cos that was her nature. She wanted to see what was going on.
0:57:30 > 0:57:34Every street, virtually every square of pavement has got
0:57:34 > 0:57:38an imprint of my wife on it and so it makes driving in London
0:57:38 > 0:57:41virtually a spiritual experience, every day I go out.
0:57:47 > 0:57:51How I find London, it is a beautiful mess.
0:57:53 > 0:57:56You've got these really modern buildings
0:57:56 > 0:57:58next to very, very old ones
0:57:58 > 0:58:02that survived the Second World War and that is London, you know,
0:58:02 > 0:58:05all those bits and pieces thrown all over the shop.
0:58:08 > 0:58:11I think it says about who we are as people.
0:58:11 > 0:58:14You can turn a corner and you feel lost.
0:58:16 > 0:58:19But it doesn't mean you can't find your way out of it.
0:58:44 > 0:58:48Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd