You can find his illegitimate architectural progeny everywhere from Ladbroke Grove to Highgate, and they always give you that same uneasy feeling of déjà vu, like seeing the milkman’s nose on your own first-born.
It’s in the books, like it or not: the great man would moonlight for a grand in hand and borrow his materials from whatever else he was doing at the time. Number 17, Grosvenor Terrace, to be more precise: an unassuming little early-Victorian masterpiece knocked off by Sir Charles Barry in his lunch hours while he was doing the Reform Club. And on this cold November afternoon, atoning for sins I couldn’t even count and probably looking about as cheerful as a tricoteuse being told that the day’s executions have been cancelled due to bad weather, Hampstead was where I was headed. The economic geography of London has changed a lot in the last few years, but Hampstead is always Hampstead.
I have to admit, though, that ‘strong’ wasn’t exactly how I was feeling: when you look like a pistachio-ice-cream sundae, it’s no easy thing to hang tough. From Bunhill Fields in the east I rode out across London – the place of my strength. Today I’d gone for a green tuxedo with a fake wilting flower in the buttonhole, pink patent-leather shoes and a painted-on moustache in the style of Groucho Marx. Normally I wear a Tsarist army greatcoat – the kind that sometimes gets called a paletot – with pockets sewn in for my tin whistle, my notebook, a dagger and a chalice. Great work, team: now into your starting positions for book two. And finally to my wife, Lin, the super-powered offspring of a lawyer and a Litvak, who spotted no fewer than six massive errors in the original typescript. To desk editor Gabriella Nemeth, whose London A-Z, unlike mine, is the right way up. Also to my ever-inspiring agent, Meg Davis, who helped out with my stumbling Russian, and my editor Darren Nash who provided both a sounding board for ideas and a large quantity of Belgian beer to help with the acoustics for said board. With thanks to all the staff at the London Metropolitan Archive who were so hospitable and so generous with their time – especially Jan Pimblett and Dorota Pomorska-Dawid.
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