In a very long tradition, and on the advice of Dr Samuel Johnson, we walked London's lanes. "If you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this great City", he implored, "you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts". This message is posted at the back of Wine Office Court, one of the loveliest lanes in London, and one of our favourites. We had a drink back here, raising our glass to all who had travelled before us, at Ye Olde Cock Tavern, which itself is dripping with history. If my bones were as old as the tavern beams what a tale they would tell. And Samuel Johnson himself came before us. He lived in the back court, just steps from here. The house where he lived with his black manservant, Francis Barber, is marked by a blue plaque. His cat, Hodge, sits in bronze now, on the dictionary that Johnson wrote, that made him so famous, looking towards home, perhaps for Samuel, replete after a feed of oysters which Johnson could never ask his manservant to go out and buy. Instead he would hunt them down personally for his special friend.
We move on to Fleet street: its name carved in stone upon the buildings. Behind the dragon statue that now marks the site of the old Temple Bar, separating the Strand from Fleet street: about half way between Westminster and the City of London, finishing off that walk from the city mansions.
We have left behind Somerset House. And the tiled facade of the Strand Station, which is no longer in use. One of its most famous recent jobs, this derelict underground station, was to store the Elgin Marbles for the British Museum during the war, protecting them under deep layers of earth and stone. We passed the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy, tucked in another back lane, on grounds where the old Savoy House once occupied a massive chunk of the Thames waterfront before it was turned into dwellings and office blocks and streets. This used to be the private chapel of the Savoy Palace. Today it is one of the Queen's private chapels, and is still owned by the reigning monarch, and maintained from the Queen's coffers. 'A poky little place', tucked down a back lane; it is good that someone is looking after it.
We passed the beautiful old stand of street lights in front of the magnificent Royal Courts of Justice, which occupy another city block. Then Twining's Tea House with its decorated facade remembering days when the Thames was clogged with tea merchant clippers returning from trips to the Far East, their holds filled to bulging with the precious merchandise. Down another lane we went to another building with an ornate facade: the Norfolk Hotel. This was where politician, John Profumo met his mistress Christine Keeler, before the scandal broke and caused chaos. How could their relationship not have been discovered. They were barely a hop, step and jump away from Fleet street, with its hoards of eagle-eyes all on the lookout for a political reporting 'kill'.
We then left The Strand and entered Fleet Street proper named after the underground river, the Fleet, with its source waynorth on the heath in Hampstead, from where it flows underground until it empties into the Thames not far from here. Fleet Street was known for the days not long ago, when every bar within cooee, and just about every service building was here for the journalist trade. Here they all worked, until Rupert Murdoch started the big exodus in the 1980s, dealing a death blow to the old traditional print industry which was all that had been known until digital technology superseded it.
The old retro building of Posts, Couriers and Journals still survives, the last to remind us of the traditional printing press, still owned and operated by the Scottish publishers, who popularised The Beano. Gog and Magog, the giant protectors of London, still club out the time on top of the ancient guild church of St Dunstan-in-the-West, though they are occasionally a bit out with their timing these days, their clubbing is not what it used to be. Mind you, the clock is old, dating way back to 1671. It deserves an off day every once in a while.
On the opposite side of Fleet Street is an old bank, C Hoare's, whose founder was initially a goldsmith, who used to advertise his wares "at the sign of the golden bottle" in the days before street numbering. It so happened that many such goldsmiths, who had secure premises for their wares, were able to store cash and valuables for others, charging them interest in doing so; and in this way banking evolved. Hoare kept the gilded leather bottle sign through the centuries and today it marks the oldest private bank remaining in the country.
The journalists have now almost all gone from Fleet Street and today bankers occupy many of their buildings. The gorgeous art deco Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph with its heavy monumental facade, are now filled with men from Goldman Sachs.
Tucked behind them in little back lanes, in what look like residential houses are actually offices for sets of lawyers. Some of the most prestigious firms in the country occupy the very lanes that Samuel Johnson once walked hunting down an evening meal of oysters for his beloved cat, Hodge.
Before all of them, though, men of religion walked here. With their black mantles over white robes, they were called the Black Friars. They were Dominicans and had their priory closer to the river, where today, there is a gorgeous wedge-shaped pub which bears their name, and a stone monk standing tall at the entrance, overlooking the river.
And, crossing the Thames, is Blackfriar's Bridge, where, on the morning of 18 June 1982, the body of banker and financier to the Vatican, Robert Calvi, was found hanging, his pockets stuffed with heavy bricks and stones. Not gold. A warning to anyone ever tempted to play with gilded fire.
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