Tag Archives: london

A busy market in a street in west London

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CROWDS OF TOURISTS swarm to west London’s Portobello Road Market, especially on weekends. But how many of these visitors from all over the world know anything about the history of the place?

Here is an excerpt from my book “BEYOND MARYLEBONE AND MAYFAIR: EXPLORING WEST LONDON”. Beginning with Kensington and Paddington, it describes London from west of Park Lane and the Edgware Road to (and including) Heathrow Airport, and from Wembley south to Chelsea.

Here is an extract from the chapter dealing with Portobello Road:

“Before the mid-19thcentury Portobello Lane, as it was then called, was to quote the historians Florence Gladstone and Ashley Barker (writing in1924):“‘… one of the most rural and pleasant walks in the summer in the vicinity of London’, and within living memory it led ‘through fields to Kensal Green… cornfields and meadow land on each side… ‘”

Well, Portobello Road is no longer bucolic. It is lined with buildings along its length. Currently, it begins with a short section that leads off Pembridge Villas. It is here that you can stop for a drink at the Sun in Splendour pub, which was built in the early 1850s.Afterrunning a few yards westwards, Portobello Road heads off in a north-westerly direction, which it maintains with barely any deviation for the rest of its length. Number 22 was the first London home of the writer George Orwell. He lived there as a lodger in the winter of 1927. After crossing Chepstow Villas, the road slopes downwards and soon after this the market area commences. On most weekdays, much of the market is dedicated to daily needs, mostly food. On Fridays and Saturdays, the number of stalls and the variety of goods on offer increases dramatically. In normal times (i.e., when there is no pandemic),Portobello Road is choked with crowds of people from all over the world on Saturdays. In the 1860s, the Metropolitan Line (now the ‘Hammersmith and City Line,) was built. It crosses Portobello Road …”

To discover more about London, from west of Park Lane and the Edgware Road to Heathrow Airport, buy a copy of my book/kindle from Amazon website, e.g..:

After the heatwave came the cloudburst … après moi le déluge

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FOR OVER A WEEK at the end of June and the beginning of July (2025), temperatures in London hovered around 30 degrees Celsius. Then, it became a bit cooler, and the sky clouded over. Despite the slight decrease in temperature, the air in London remained unpleasantly humid.

Then, on Sunday the 6th of July, the heavens opened. Rain came streaming down. The downpour was as heavy as monsoon rains I have seen in India.

After less than 10 minutes, the rain ceased, there were several rolls of thunder, and the sky became blue once more.

The photograph shows the disadvantages of a flat roof. With poor drainage, it becomes a swimming pool.

Walk the house on London’s South Bank

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DO HO SUH is an artist who was born in South Korea in 1962. He was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Seoul National University, and then later, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. He lived and worked in Seoul, then in New York City, and now in London. So, during his life, he has changed homes several times while moving from place to place. His exhibition that is on show in London’s Tate Modern until 19 October 2025 is called “Walk the House”. The exhibition is his artistic interpretation of what the concept of home means and of his experiences of moving from one residence to another.

A house within a house

Th artist’s works in the exhibition range from sketches, paintings, and sculptures to spectacular three-dimensional installations. Some of the installations can be entered and explored by visitors. In one of them, called “Nest/s”, the artist has stitched together a series of rooms made of translucent cloth that evoke places where he has lived in Seoul, New York, London, and Berlin. Visitors walk along a tunnel from room, thus following in the footsteps of the artist as he changed homes.  Another large installation that can be entered is a large room made of translucent, white polyester. To the walls of this structure, the artist has attached models of appliances and fittings that were in each of the homes he has lived. The items that have been attached have been colour coded: a different colour for each of the places in which he has dwelled. One other thing that particularly appealed to me is a translucent resin model of the house in which he lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Visible within this model there is a model of Suh’s childhood home in Seoul.

The Tate’s web page for this exhibition explained:

“Is home a place, a feeling, or an idea? Suh asks timely questions about the enigma of home, identity and how we move through and inhabit the world around us.

With immersive artworks exploring belonging, collectivity and individuality, connection and disconnection, Suh examines the intricate relationship between architecture, space, the body, and the memories and the moments that make us who we are.”

And this does well summarise what can be viewed in this exhibition, which is well worth visiting.

Recycling in nineteenth century Kolkata (Calcutta) and London

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THE GWALIOR MONUMENT stands on the bank of the Hooghly River in Kolkata (Calcutta). The monument commemorates British officers and their men, who died in the Gwalior War of 1843. Constructed in 1847 by the then Governor General of India, Lord Ellenborough, its roof is made of metal.

Several thousand miles away near London’s Hyde Park Corner and the towering Hilton hotel, there is a statue of the ancient hero Achilles. It commemorates the victories of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, and his men who helped achieve them. Standing on a granite plinth, Achilles is made of metal.

These two distantly spaced British memorials both contain metal in their construction. They have one more thing in common. The metal on the roof of the Gwalior Monument and that used to make Achilles is recycled. In each case, the metal was obtained by melting down the canons of the defeated armies. In the case of the Gwalior Monument, the metal was derived from the cannons of the defeated Marath army, and in the Achilles statue, it was derived from the enemy’s cannons captured at the battles of Salamanca, Vittoria, Toulouse, and Waterloo.

I wonder how the defeated armies would have felt if they had known that their weapons were being melted down to celebrate their opponents’ victories.

Covering the walls with flowers

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AT THIS TIME OF the year (April), many walls in London are partly hidden behind the exuberant bunches of flowers sprouting from the twisted trunks of Wisteria plants.

The Wisteria was originally grown in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, southern Canada, the north of Iran, and in the east of the USA.  The first Wisteria plant to be grown in Britain was imported from Canton in China in 1816, This was a Wisteria sinensis plant. In 1830, another variety was introduced from Japan. Both varieties have both mauve flowers and white flowers.

In and around London’s Kensington, where I live, although both colours of flower can be seen, the mauve outnumbers the white.

Dwarfed by dogs in Mayfair’s Dover Street

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SOME SAY SMALL is beautiful. But can colossal also be beautiful? This is something that can be explored at the Thaddeus Ropac Gallery in London’s Dover Street until 2 April 2025, where three much larger than life realistic looking sculptures of dogs are on display. These dogs, each about 10 feet high, have been created by the artist Ron Mueck, who was born in Australia in 1958. He now works in the UK.

As the gallery’s website explained:

“Over a career spanning three decades, Mueck is celebrated for exploring the physiological implications of scale. Whether miniaturised or enlarged, his use of scale heightens our awareness of the relative spaces our own bodies occupy, as he charts the full spectrum of human experience with striking perceptiveness.”

The three dogs on display in the exhibition ought to feel menacing, but I did not experience this sensation. I was more amused than over-awed.