What hooked me to London
"London: the Swinging City" - the famous TIME Magazine cover of April 1966, coining a phrase which defined a significant era in London's history. A few months earlier, I had made my own first visit to London in the company of my parents. Our four-day visit began calamitously when an out-of-control learner driver broadsided our car in Vauxhall, but the Great Metrops exerted an immediate pull on me. We visited the Imperial War Museum, Gamages department store (clearly dying on its feet), the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, travelling on the Central Line, but best of all, on the 88 bus route. London's buses were world-class, I concluded, and I wanted to make them a part of my everyday life. Returning to Hull after that brief introduction was an almighty anticlimax. Then along came the TIME cover story.
My overwhelming wish to move to London was eventually fulfilled in 1972. Deep joy. I withstood attempts by my first employer to locate me in Birmingham and later Nottingham (no quarrel with the latter, but it wasn't metropolitan). London seemed to have lost some of its 1960s' raw energy by the time I dropped anchor there, but I had over four decades of fulfillment. I was never unemployed, earned a fair salary and had a great social life. There were many pubs to visit and buses to ride - by far the best way to get around London.
TIME Magazine commissioned Gerald Scarfe to do the 1966 cover that is full of Swinging London symbols. He and I have the most tenuous connection: Scarfe was born in 1936, living firstly in Goldhurst Terrace NW6. He was bombed out of his childhood home during the Blitz. Goldhurst Terrace was my own London base for over 40 years.
What hooked me to London
"London: the Swinging City" - the famous TIME Magazine cover of April 1966, coining a phrase which defined a significant era in London's history. A few months earlier, I had made my own first visit to London in the company of my parents. Our four-day visit began calamitously when an out-of-control learner driver broadsided our car in Vauxhall, but the Great Metrops exerted an immediate pull on me. We visited the Imperial War Museum, Gamages department store (clearly dying on its feet), the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, travelling on the Central Line, but best of all, on the 88 bus route. London's buses were world-class, I concluded, and I wanted to make them a part of my everyday life. Returning to Hull after that brief introduction was an almighty anticlimax. Then along came the TIME cover story.
My overwhelming wish to move to London was eventually fulfilled in 1972. Deep joy. I withstood attempts by my first employer to locate me in Birmingham and later Nottingham (no quarrel with the latter, but it wasn't metropolitan). London seemed to have lost some of its 1960s' raw energy by the time I dropped anchor there, but I had over four decades of fulfillment. I was never unemployed, earned a fair salary and had a great social life. There were many pubs to visit and buses to ride - by far the best way to get around London.
TIME Magazine commissioned Gerald Scarfe to do the 1966 cover that is full of Swinging London symbols. He and I have the most tenuous connection: Scarfe was born in 1936, living firstly in Goldhurst Terrace NW6. He was bombed out of his childhood home during the Blitz. Goldhurst Terrace was my own London base for over 40 years.