a short history of london (simon jenkins)

For evident reasons, (2000 years of history), a short history of London is a project that is doomed to be dissatisfying. No sooner do you engage with one century than you are onto the next. Jenkins’ text seems to slow down as it gets to the twentieth century, and the chapters become riper as a result of being longer. At times there’s the sense that the writer took the project on as a dare, to see if he could get around the world in eighty days. The results offer fascinating shards, but it’s all inevitably superficial. Having said which, the book nails the Westminster - City divide effectively, tracing the evolution of the royal countermand to the commercial bent of the city. Once that conflict eases, the book seems to tread water somewhat until we get to the architectural crimes of the twentieth century, where the author’s passion comes to the fore as he documents the architectural excesses that lead to the destruction of much of London’s heritage. Having said which, to live in a city is to exist in a state of constant flux, and the city that stands still is likely to atrophy, as happened to London in the post-Roman era. In some ways the city is in a state of constant tension between the forces of the future and the forces that wish to conserve. If the city is prosperous, its land acquires value, and people will seek to develop that value, in the process impinging on the past. These deeper issues tend to be skirted over by Jenkins, but again, that was probably inevitable in a project that seeks to concertina two thousand years into three hundred pages.

This also struck me because of the contrast between living in London and Montevideo, a city which has about 10% of the longevity of London. Most of the colonial buildings in this city have already gone, but the mansions and houses from the early twentieth century, when the city was briefly one of the richest in the world, have limped on in, many in a state of disrepair. As money comes into the city, much is funnelled into housing developments, which in this day and age mean blocks of shiny new flats, built like shoeboxes, which represent an entry point to the housing market for the younger affluent class. These blocks go up where the older, unwieldy art deco houses have been torn down. Barrios become disfigured, homogenised, but in theory, repopulated. A cycle of renovation is also a cycle of destruction. It’s sad to see the noble architecture, steeped in a rioplantense culture, torn down, but then this echoes so much of what Jenkins shows has happened to London, and it has to be accepted that this is how the process works, whether in Paris, London, Shanghai, Lhasa, Mumbai, Buenos Aires or Montevideo, a process only entropy or the asteroids can halt.