Next week, I shall be climbing aboard a number twenty-three bus at Liverpool St Station and going up west to alight in Piccadilly Circus, then walking down Piccadilly to just where this photograph was taken and entering Joseph Edgerton’s modernist shop front of 1935 that you can see on the right.
Originally opened as Simpsons of Piccadilly, today it is Britain’s largest Waterstones bookshop where I shall be giving a MAGIC LANTERN SHOW at 7pm next Wednesday 5th February showing one hundred of my favourite photographs of London old and new, selected from more than sixteen thousand pictures I have published on these pages, and telling the stories of the people and the places. It is my honour to present this as the inaugural event in The London Salon and tickets are free but should be reserved by emailing events.piccadilly@waterstones.com
Contemplating my trip to the West End inspired me to take a look through the collection of thousands of glass slides, once used for education lectures by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society around a century ago at the Bishopsgate Institute, and show you these old photographs of Piccadilly.
Piccadilly Circus was my first view of London as I ascended the steep staircase from the underground on the western side and later, when I came to reside here, I felt that unless I went through Piccadilly at least weekly I was not really living in London. Stephen Spender once told me that he also enjoyed passing through Piccadilly and the thrill of feeling that he was at the centre of the world and – although I hardly ever seem to go there these days – whenever I see the cylindrical structure at the core of Piccadilly Circus, I still cannot resist the notion that it is the hub around which the earth revolves.
Rush hour in Piccadilly c.1900
Piccadilly Circus, c.1900
Piccadilly Circus in the fog, c1910
Piccadilly Circus, c.1880
Piccadilly Circus, c.1930
In Piccadilly Circus, c. 1910
In Piccadilly, c.1920
In Regent St, c.1900
Outside the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, c.1930
Old shop in Haymarket, c. 1900
The Haymarket Theatre, c.1900
The Ritz Hotel, c. 1900
Commissionaire, c. 1930
Piccadilly and Green Park, c.1890
Walking down Piccadilly beside Green Park at the time of Victoria’s Jubilee, 1897
Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner, c.1910
Strolling at Hyde Park Corner, c.1920
St James Palace, c. 1900
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S MAGIC LANTERN SHOW, Waterstones Bookshop in Piccadilly, 7pm Wednesday 5th February
You may also like to take a look at
The Lantern Slides of Old London
The High Days & Holidays of Old London
The Fogs & Smogs of Old London
The Forgotten Corners of Old London
The Statues & Effigies of Old London
The City Churches of Old London