London, London

To Lon­don — only 45 minutes late due to a) a late start from the car­riage sid­ings in Edin­burgh and b) a broken down freight train in the Northaller­ton area. (Paras. 14 and 26 in the GNER excuse-book). Slightly ameli­or­ated by a cap­pu­cino in the cof­fee shop on the foot­bridge at York, from which there is a fine view of any trains that hap­pen to be running.

Lon­don Tip: when you spot the massive queues for tick­ets at all the guichets and machines at the main Under­ground con­course at Kings Cross, fol­low the signs to the Met­ro­pol­itan and Circle Lines — lots of machines and no queues (at least until Eurostar gets here). You can eas­ily double back to the deep tube lines.

So, Spit­al­fields Mar­ket — half rebuilt, the other half in flagante with build­ing works but some­how strug­gling on round the scaf­fold­ing and tar­paulin — it’s going to be great when it’s finished.

The Gef­frye Museum — suite of period rooms, the middle classes in Lon­don from c. 1500, really well done, and well explained, lead­ing to a won­der­ful ima­gin­at­ive 1998 exten­sion con­tain­ing fur­ther rooms, café, shop, and spe­cial exhib­i­tions. Cur­rent exhib­i­tion is of paint­ings of 20^th cen­tury Lon­don homes and gar­den­sto 1960 — inter­est­ing how the sort of 1930s sub­urbs I was brought up in, and which many of us decry as sterile now, were rich with artistic pos­sib­il­it­ies when they were rel­at­ively newly built.

Hox­ton Square — looks local — reminded me of a square in Ber­lin — open air tables out­side pubs and cafes.

Lon­don Review of Books Book­shop near the Brit­ish Museum — won­der­ful selec­tion of good lit­er­at­ure — not exclus­ively focussed on best sellers — and a won­der­fully com­pre­hens­ive poetry sec­tion in the basement.

John White in Amer­ica exhib­i­tion in the Brit­ish Museum — £7 and worth every penny. This man drew and painted the flora, fauna, and human inhab­it­ants of the West Indies and, par­tic­u­larly, “Vir­ginia” (now North Car­o­lina) in the 1580s. It was the pictorial rep­res­ent­a­tions of Algon­quin vil­lages which I found most inter­est­ing — it was White’s view that these were civ­il­ised, settled and cul­tiv­ated people — pity his coun­try­men pre­ferred to shoot them and steal their land rather than share it. But then, if they had done that we wouldn’t have had George Bush ! It’s a beau­ti­fully presen­ted exhibition.

And while I think of it, if you missed the Brit­ish Lib­rary exhib­i­tion, Lon­don, A Life in Maps, you missed another treat. Under­stand­ing the city as an organism.