LONDON, MOST FASCINATING of great cities, has been very badly damaged by dreadful developments in recent years, many of them money-led, but devoid of any feeling for context or even for human beings. Meanwhile the wreckage of whole areas through ideological “redevelopment” and the imposition of bog-standard, dysfunctional, leaking, Modernist blocks to house large numbers of unfortunate people has blighted many lives and ruined large parts of the capital.
Yet there was a time when the place was immeasurably improved, graced by some marvellous, real, finely crafted architecture, so that by 1914 London was a much better place than it had
