This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 12th March 1988: The Bank of England withdraws the £1 note from circulation, making way for pound coins.
- Tuesday – 13th March 1807: The Grand Surrey Canal Basin at Rotherhithe is opened. The area forms a part of what we now know as Surrey Quays.
- Wednesday – 14th March 1933: Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr. is born in Rotherhithe. He would become better known as successful film actor Michael Caine.
- Thursday – 15th March 1976: A tube train driver is shot dead as he chases a man who detonated a bomb on his train.
- Friday – 16th March 2008: Veteran London actor John Hewer, best known for portraying Captain Birdseye in British TV commercials for over 30 years, dies at Brinsworth House in Twickenham, at the age of 86.
Random London Quote Of The Week
It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners – all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. I have felt these things at times so strongly that I have said – "Ah London, you too then are impossible?" But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. I take it as an artist and as a bachelor; as one who has the passion of observation and whose business is the study of human life. It is the biggest aggregation of human life – the most complete compendium of the world.
Henry James
Picture by KarenB Photos via the Londonist Flickr Pool.
