alt title(s): London
"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
"There's a hole in the world,
Like a great black pit,
And the vermin of the world,
Inhabit it,
And its morals aren't worth,
What a pig could spit,
And it goes by the name of London."
To Hollywood in many cases,
Britain Is Only London. How they portray the place is generally split into two approaches:
Where The Streets Are Paved With Gold
A place full of rich people, fancy society balls, posh accents and general happiness.
Where The Streets Are Paved With Excrement
A place full of
poor people, dirty streets, violent crime and
general misery. Expect Cockney and/or the rougher-sounding East London accent.
- People associate this with Oliver Twist, but actually it isn't an example- both sides are featured.
- Anything involving Jack The Ripper.
- The Lily Allen song "LDN".
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (see page quote)
In real life, London is very much a combination of the two and there's very much a sliding scale. You've got Notting Hill, through to a fair number of middle class areas, down to the "sink estates" of areas like Shadwell (the really poor places as seen in
Oliver Twist went with slum clearance).
Various areas of London (we're using the Greater London Authority area, although people in a number of those areas don't always consider themselves Londoners) have their own stereotypes:
- The Docklands: Home of the former Port of London. Until that closed down, it had the same tropes as the East End, retaining many of them until the 1980s. With massive urban redevelopment, most notably of the Canary Wharf area, it is now perceived as an area of business and yuppie-owned flats.
- A good portion of Layer Cake is set in and around the Docklands and Canary Wharf and implies that Michael Gambon's character, a powerful gangster turned respected businessman, had a major role in gentrifying the area (this is meant as a Shout Out to The Long Good Friday where a Bob Hoskins character expresses this same plan).
- The East End: The precise boundaries of this area vary depending on who you ask. We'll be using the largest definition, the entirety of the "E" postcode area. The amount of fiction set here is massive. You've got a lot of Music Hall, opium dens, many a British-set gangster film (the place is the home of the Kray Winstone) and a number of works involving the UK's South Asian community.
- The Bill is set in a fictional version of this area and The Docklands.
- East Enders whoda thunk it? ;p
- Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels
- Brick Lane
- The novels of Martina Cole are mostly set here and reference specific locales (the Ilford Palais dance hall, Oxlow Lane)
- East of the East End: The areas of Greater London that were formerly part of Essex before 1965 and still identify with the latter. There's Barking ("One stop after East Ham" and its variants are a British way of saying "crazy", referencing Barking station, on the District and c2c railway lines), but most notably Romford. The setting of Garth Marenghis Darkplace, it's become a UK synonym for "chav"- the UK equivalent of "white trash".
- This isn't really fair, even if the place has a rather right-wing MP in the form of Andrew Rosindell.
- Soho: Home of Chinatown and London's (now quite small) "red-light district". Expect to see this more in the 1970s. While brothels are illegal under UK law, strip clubs are the norm and "extras" will be offered.
- South London ("Saarf London"): Home of The Yardies, but the two most famous things set there are Only Fools And Horses and the new Doctor Who, where it's the home of Rose Tyler.
- The Square Mile: The area of the City of London, a distinct area from Greater London. Centre of Britain plc.
- The West End. Home of a lot of London's famous shopping streets and its theatres. The West End is of course the UK's equivalent of Broadway and a number of musicals do both of them.
- Whitehall- Home of the British Government.
- North London: Islington, Shoreditch, Hoxton and so on. Trendy, "artistic", lefty sorts of areas often shown as being full of pretentious tossers. Islington is relatively wealthy and "nicer" than the others - here you'll find the "chattering classes". Hotblack Desiato from The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe is famously named after a firm of Islington estate agents.
- Camden: Also an arty, trendy area famous for its markets. Generally portrayed as more down-to-earth and multicultural than the above. Lots of drug subculture - usually soft drugs rather than Trainspotting-style squalor. The main characters in Withnail And I live in Camden.
The Famous Streets of London
London has many famous streets. Many are best known from the UK version of
Monopoly:
- Harley Street - Home of many private medical facilities, but not on the board
- Old Kent Road - the first spot past GO on the board, this road starts in Walworth and heads South East
- Baker Street - Home of Sherlock Holmes
- Mayfair - the most expensive square on the board
E Numbers- The London Postal District system
When you're walking around inner London, you might see codes like E1 and WC3 on the street signs. These are the UK's equivalent to the first five digits of US zip codes, but are far more widely known in the UK, although they only appear on street signs in certain places.
Certain post codes are more desirable than others. E1, the heart of the East End, has now become pretty attractive.
British opposition politicians refer to "a postcode lottery" in terms of public services provision- with different areas having different levels. This is due to day-to-day running of schools and hospitals being devolved to special local authorities, such as an LEA (Local Education Authority).
These are sometimes rendered by their compass points, as in the name of the boy band East 17 (Walthamstow), later E-17.
There is no NE or S postal code in London - NE is the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northeast England, S is the city of Sheffield. The codes are:
- E1-18. The East End. The "East of the East End" area has the RM and IG codes.
- EC1-4. The city of London.
- W1-14. Actually two separate postal areas due to the sheer number of addresses in W1 (The West End), it covers inner West London.
- WC1-2. Camden and Westminster.
- SW1-20. SW 1 is Whitehall. SW 19 is Wimbledon.
- SE1-28
- N1-22. North London, partly going outside the GLA area.
- NW1-11.
E98 is a code allocated for
News International.
There are now sub-divisions for postal purposes, i.e EC4Y for the Temple area in the city of London.
The London Postal District is far smaller than Greater London, so areas outside it use their traditional county names, such as "Barking, Essex" and the "Brentford, Middlesex" (abolished in 1965 as an administrative county), which is the name of a cricket club.
The entry points
London has
six main airports (plus some smaller ones), all of which have featured in fiction at some point. Not all of these are inside the Greater London area.
- Heathrow (LHR). Formerly London Airport, it's the busiest international passenger airport in the world. A fifth terminal has just opened (with a spectacular failure of systems on the first day), while a controversial third runway is planned. It features in Doctor Who ("Time Flight" to be precise). It was also the departure point in several James Bond novels.
- Gatwick (LGW). The second busiest UK airport, with two terminals.
- Stansted (STN). North east of London.
- Luton (LTN). Best known for the airline easyJet, featured in the Docu Soap Airline.
- City Airport (LCY). In the London Docklands.
- Biggin Hill (BQH). A private airport, formerly a famous RAF base.
Airlines will often sell tickets to airports they claim to be "London" but are nothing of the sort. A certain Irish airline was fined a few years back for selling tickets from Sydney, Australia to London Prestwick, Prestwick being an airport on the outskirts of Glasgow, a good 12 hours train journey away. Arguably, Stanstead and Luton were under this category for years, until the likes of easyJet started moaning about it.
London is also a major port. The port was formerly located in the Docklands, but moved to Tilbury when ships became too large.
London also has the Eurostar train service to mainland Europe. This used to run out of Waterloo (which features in the film of
The Bourne Ultimatum), but has now moved to St. Pancras, which frankly needed some love- the only thing that went from there was the Midland Mainline service.
To get around London by car (going through it most people will tell you is pointless, given the traffic congestion and the congestion charge during weekdays) you'll need to navigate the M25 (AKA the world's largest car park, although not so much since they widened it. Although the way things are going, it'll end up like that again), the motorway which circles most of London (the only gap being the Dartford Crossing which is part of the M25 in all but name). A word to any inexperienced motorists who plan on attempting to use the M25 - don't, it will suck out your soul.
- According to Good Omens, this is because the M25 was made in the shape of the ancient sigil odegra, which translates to "All hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds."
Other Bits Of London in fiction
- The red buses. Most notably, the Routemasters, with their open back entrance. The Routemasters have now been removed, but there have been calls for their return with Boris Johnson, Conservative Mayoral candidate, promising to replace the controversial "bendy-buses" that took over with a modern, more-disabled-friendly Routemaster.
- So they won't be buying back the ones in Davis, California?
Good. This troper finds their presence part of the local charm.
- The London Underground.
- "Pea Soup". London used to have a smog problem due to the burning of soft coal. It's now gone.
- Pearly Kings and Queens
See also:
