Some great souls have helped preserve London’s architecture – as gorgeous, monumental and distinguished as the buildings themselves.
William Morris, John Summerson, Mark Girouard, various Guinnesses, Ian Nairn, Spike Milligan, Michael Heseltine, Lord Duncan-Sandys, Nikolaus Pevsner and the poo-bah teddy bear of them all, Sir John Betjeman.
And me. I feel unworthy to step into the clumpy shoes of John Betjeman. Surely I ought, humbly, to slide in through a back door and lurk in a well-proportioned, shadowy corner.
But I have been appointed President of the campaign to save Liverpool Street Station.
We have to stop a new threat. A cross between a monstrous killer squid and a bloated white elephant is threatening to engulf dear old Liverpool Street. We need to start shouting again.
I have used this great 1870s terminal all my life. That’s, frighteningly, for almost a third of its existence.
I started when it looked a bit more like Edward Bawden’s sooty and dramatic linocuts. I’ve ambled through the station, lazily heading for appointments. I’ve sat waiting for that hourly Norwich fast train. I’ve charged across the concourse, desperate to get the last train to Suffolk after appearing in the West End,
