Is this one reason I like working in a museum? It’s a constant reminder of the myriad histories present in any city and a privileged insight into the lost layers of the city.
“An interesting exercise can be performed on the streets of London. Look around you, at the shopfronts and the traffic and the houses, and imagine these things as historical phenomena. Envision them as a temporary stage set in a drama with no ending. Then the true nature of the period will become apparent.”
From a London: City of Disappearances
No wonder London sucks you in: “Of all cities, London most powerfully touches the imagination. It is the landscape for these stories because no other place has the same capacity for labyrinthine obliquity. It elicits wonder and horror in equal measure. In Blake’s words, it has become ‘a human awful wonder of God’.”