● ONE OF THE MANY virtues of John Grindrod’s excellent recent book, Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings, published in March, is that he helps to make sense of the sometimes random and apparently shambolic new developments in London and how they came about, initially through the active encouragement of Ken Livingstone, who regarded big, new, high-rise buildings as symbols of London’s prowess. The process continued exponentially through lackadaisical planning controls when Boris Johnson was mayor.
One part of this story I did not know about was the development of Olympic
