Okay, well, it's been a year and a half but since nobody's out there listening, I guess it doesn't matter much. Also doesn't matter much then, that this post isn't even about London. But it is about Nairn - Nairn's Paris, that is. On a fleeting visit, wasn't surprised to see much more of the Paris that I.N. describes still exists today, both physically and atmospherically. Will restrict myself to one entry and a photo - simply, Palais-Royal.

"...or bonjour tristesse... gravelled and filled with six lines of trees pleached out of roundness to run along the alles and shade seats in a physical graticule which becomes also an emotional one.... surely among the greyest joys of the world, that far end of Mozart which already seems beyond the grave."

Pleached. I really love Pleached. And the place still lives up to the prose, especially on a november afternoon. The only regret is that 'Drapeaux de France', the greatest tin soldier shop in the world, was closed, and appears unfindable. I hope it's not.

St. Pancras Station

Taken at around midnight, from the terrace of the Betjeman. A vast, throbbing hangar, apparently. And indeed it is. Painted light in 1968, "as some kind of campaign 'to brighten the image of British Rail', but its only true colour is jet black". Well it's certainly been given a scrubbing now, but still not quite enough to compromise Barlow's original structure - unlike what's been done to poor Liverpool Street and the second-rate shopping mall that's going to be shoehorned into the body cavity of Waterloo. Those big hanging Olympic rings give it a bit of a totalitarian look, which is not entirely inappropriate, if you think about it.

After describing the train shed and gently rubbishing the hotel, there's a fine passage detailing the landscape round the back of the station. Needless to say, all the buildings and topography that I.N. eulogises have been demolished. You can get some idea of the feel of the area by watching "The Ladykillers", in which, conversely, the villains fail to destroy the old lady.

Realms of Gold

Just to put this slight off-topic Southwark / Borough excursion to bed, here's a photo of Weston street today as it runs under London Bridge Station - Weston Street where Keats was living in 1816 when he wrote 'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer'. Back on track with N.L. next post.
Incidentally, there's 3 copies of N.L. on O-bey right now - at reasonable prices, too. I plan to bag all three. Also a sensibly-priced copy of Nairn's Paris - and one on 'buy it now' at over eighty quid. Hurr, as Sbirro might've said.

Dulwich

Dulwich, a couple of weeks ago, with Harry, for the Salvator Rosa at Dulwich. I.N.'s not sure, or rather, he is.




"One of Soane's most original, least satisfying designs... A great curiosity, not a masterpiece".




Remember though, that I.N. is reporting on this building in 1968, when the restoration was new and sparkly. Forty+ years have mellowed the brick considerably. And of course, the great man's generosity of spirit spurs him to a footnote:




"*If you don't agree, and would like to look up an opposite view, read Sir John Summerson, in Georgian London. It is one of the most incisive and brilliant descriptions of a building that has ever appeared in print."




And so it is. See pps 158/159. And if you haven't got a copy, buy one.




Then a pint or two in the Crown and Greyhound, a pleasant pub in Dulwich Village. The exuberant decorations described by I.N. swept away without trace, even before Gasson's revision, which may or may not be a pity. Ole!

Thence to the spiked London bridge and the drinking houses of the Borough, via Guy's Hospital Chapel to see the Thomas Guy memorial. I.N.:

"...The nobility of that grave, concerned face is universal, and in a way we are more than ever in need of it now. Every autocratic hospital matron and bureaucratic Ministry of Health official should be exposed to this for an hour a day, as to a heat lamp, until the humility and true concern sinks in."
Well... easy on the nursing staff, Ian, but stick it to the administrators. So no photo - go and see.

Southwark Cathedral From the Borough side

Southwark Cathedral:

"A proper working cathedral, squeezed on one side by the high level railway approach to London Bridge ... Opening-out would only accentuate the architectural defects. Southwark is a large friendly lump of a building but no more."

and yet here, unexpectedly , in 2010, partially opened-out it has been, if only for a few months before rebuilding blocks the view again. Southwark Cathedral from Borough High Street.

And despite Xrail and various shards and shardlings, the Borough in 2010 is still - to all intents and purposes - recognisable as the same Street Geoffrey Fletcher describes in 1968 in "Geoffrey Fletcher's London". Read, compare, have a pint.

Empress State Building

For a chap who's inclined to be more than usually tolerant of postwar buildings, Nairn's not very nice about the Empress State. I see what he means, but forty-odd years on it seems relatively benign. I can never see it without thinking of the problems of fitting furniture to curved walls - Madame Bovary's first apartment problem? Anyway, Nairn:

The Empress State Building (!) is a Wimbledon Housewife twenty-six storeys high, lifting her little finger as she drinks her tea (It ought to have a crop of trees on top like Vanbrugh's Eastbury).

1. Waal it's been dang near a year. But a year of adjusting to cardiac medication and - well, actually, nobody gives a toss as this still has no followers. Sod me - I don't matter, but Nairn deserves better. Anyway, we did the St. George's Bloomsbury wind / unwind. In case you're unfamiliar..:

"Start in Bloomsbury way and follow signs to the left-hand side of the portico to St. George's Hall. The gap between church an neighbouring buildings narrows to a few feet, so that you are thrust against the prodigious keystones, actually touch the wonderful time-worn scales on the Portland Stone. Then the way dives down: a Hawkesmorean turn even though it is provided by accident. It turns a corner by going down and then up again. Seven steps down, a ninety-degree bend, six steps up. It sounds simple but in fact has the drama of a full symphonic movement, charged up by the stupendous classical detail that bores a hole in your right flank. Once upstairs again, you have a new character - quiet, not busy; a new street (Little Russell Street) and, bless me, when you turn round there's a new building - the rear elevation of St. George's, completely different from the rest: the best part of the church. One huge pediment over five bays, thickly columned, the perspective artificially enhanced by that old wizard so that the ground floor is hugely overscale whilst the top cornice is delicate. Back again, if you wish, and the whole thing unwinds in a completely different sequence."

Match that. Sleep tight.