Big Ben - one of the great icons of London

London. The capital of England and of the United Kingdom, and one of the world's greatest cities. Covering an area of 1580 square kilometers or about 510 square miles, it has a population of almost eight million people. It is steeped in 2000 years of history and is a city of great diversiy and vitality. It's the city where I work.

This site is a photo-gallery of London. It has no underlying theme. It's not a tourist brochure, though some tourist attractions are inevitably featured. It's not an architectural portfolio, though buildings and structures are by far the main subject of the pictures. It's not a portrayal of London's population, its workers or its visitors, even though London is nothing without them. It doesn't profess to explain London's history, or its geography, or its economics or its business life or its social mix, though various gobbets of information on any or all of these will be included here and there to explain the context.

What fascinates me about London is the way it's always changing. Wherever you go in the city it seems you're never more than a few minutes from a construction site. New buildings, new structures, new vistas appear constantly. However, the renewal is largely piecemeal. The new arises and intermingles with the old. There are buildings in the City that have stood for six hundred years. Modern glass and steel office blocks sit cheek by jowl with Edwardian shopping parades, Victorian civic buildings, ostentatious Regency terraces, Georgian squares, gothic palaces and medieval churches. And there are areas, notably along the banks of the Thames to the east of the City, where the renewal is complete. The old wharves and docks have given way to ultra-smart new housing developments, marinas, shops, restaurants, cultural and sports facilities and tourist attractions.

These pictures, then, are about London's regeneration, and about its diversity, and about its beauty, and about its vitality. The pictures here are of places and scenes that "grab" me - scenes I find inspiring, or fascinating, or simply pleasing to the eye for some reason. London is divided into 34 boroughs and I've arranged the photo indexes borough by borough for convenience. Inevitably some areas feature far more strongly than others. The Thames-side redevelopments in Tower Hamlets and Southwark, and sights and scenes in the City and Westminster will feature strongly, whereas I may never find anything in (say) Wandsworth or Barking worth pointing a camera at. Like my other photo sites, this one will start small and grow gradually. I hope you enjoy it.

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