Bullshit and the End Times.

Back in the late 18th and 19th centuries, there was a minor craze for contemplating The End, through the medium of vast, thought-provoking canvases of familiar landscapes. Europe's ruling élites were familiar with the ruins of Rome, aware of the parallels between that empire and the various ones they were constructing, and a small proportion of these chaps wondered if sic transit gloria applied to them too. 

One of these was Sir John Soane, who not only commissioned the enormous, Classical, Bank of England complex, but also commissioned Joseph Gandy to paint his new gaff utterly destroyed in some unspecified future.

Joseph Gandy, A Vision of Sir John Soane’s Design for the Rotunda of the Bank of England as a Ruin (1789)

Not that this taste for thrilling contemplation of destruction has gone: there's a rather distasteful aestheticisation of industrial decay known as 'ruin porn' in photographic circles, from Chernobyl to guided tours of Detroit. Then there's Ballard's Tales of the Near Future. 

Why am I thinking about this stuff now? Well, it's been a weird week. On Monday and Tuesday I went to Swansea to examine a PhD and ransack the bookshops of what Dylan Thomas called an 'ugly, lovely town'. Barely a new infrastructural development lacked an EU plaque, yet like all of Wales outside Y Fro Cymraeg voted to leave. I returned to lengthy emails and texts from colleagues and friends from all points on the political spectrum expressing feelings of devastation. One of my friends – a banker – has joined the Conservative Party to vote for the most ludicrous leadership candidate possibly to ensure that they become unelectable. Though looking back on this week, I'm not sure the Tories need the help. 

The Labour Party is ripping itself apart as the right and left wings, the MPs and the members, the pragmatists and the idealists, the capitalists and the socialists engage in a blood bath. Personally I'm stuck in the middle. I happen to agree with pretty much everything Corbyn believes, but I think it's true to say that he hasn't managed to engage in the day-to-day political trench warfare required in this appalling polity. His opponents, however, are awful: most of them are right-wingers whose own constituents defied them to vote Out, a lot of them have blood on their hands from Iraq, and they're precisely the kind of polished, remote, managerialists the public now hates utterly. 

Yesterday I went to London for a British Academy lecture on Writing Political Leaders, which turned out to be a chat with Michael Dobbs of House of Cards fame. I read the newspaper on the train. Stirling had plummeted. Investment had crashed. Farage had insulted his fellow MEPs to applause from Marine Le Pen, a halal butcher's shop was burned down in Walsall, a Polish cultural centre had been vandalised, and several people had been racially abused in the street. The Governor of the Bank of England had announced that billions would have to be magicked up to save the British economy following the vote. The Leavers were explaining that they never really promised to spend £350m a week extra on the NHS:

Actually, I agree: people are quite naturally reading the bus slogan as a continuous sentence rather than as separate sentences. Remember The Simpsons: 

Bart sees an advert for Itchy & Scratchy cells:
Commercial: Each one is absolutely, one hundred percent guaranteed to increase in value.
Voiceover: Not a guarantee.

As I entrained, Boris Johnson's rag doll Michael Gove announced he was standing for the leadership of the Conservative Party. As I detrained, I heard that Boris Johnson wasn't standing, the night after Mrs Gove the Daily Mail columnist accidentally sent a weird strategy email to a member of the public, which advised her husband on negotiating with Johnson. To her, the approval of Rupert Murdoch and the Mail's editor was of paramount importance: the actual citizens weren't mentioned. So we have a Tory lineup (this morning, anyway) of Sajid Javid, a Ferengi who believes only in the Rules of Acquisition and whose favourite book is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and whose favourite film is the adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Liam Fox who is essentially Major Corkoran from Le Carré's The Night Manager, Big Brother's keener protege Theresa May, Stephen Crabb the (he says former) homophobic bigot who is backed by his associates Malfoy and Goyle, Andrea Leadsom who is a wholly-owned subsidiary of various hedge funds and who likes to send her money away on holiday to some very discreet islands in the sun, and Michael Gove who looks like Pob, sold schools to his rapacious weirdo friends in business and assorted sects, and insisted to a Parliamentary committee that all schools could and should be 'above average':

Q98 Chair: One is: if "good" requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and if all schools must be good, how is this mathematically possible?
Michael Gove: By getting better all the time.

Q99 Chair: So it is possible, is it?
Michael Gove: It is possible to get better all the time.
Q100 Chair: Were you better at literacy than numeracy, Secretary of State?
Michael Gove: I cannot remember.

The Remainers thought everything would be fine because chaps will do the decent thing. The Leavers never thought they'd win so didn't bother thinking about what might happen if they did. The financial sector is in meltdown (but will recover just fine even if it means stepping over heaps of our skulls). Labour is engaged in a protracted and cynical war and the government of the country is staggering from crisis to crisis like someone stuck in a wasp's nest who has forgotten where the entrance is. One of my friends pointed me to Harry Frankfurt's short book On Bullshit, in which he explains that there's a difference between liars, who at least know what truth is and orient themselves around it, and bullshitters, who speak according to the pressing demands of the moment without having even the regard for truth required to be a successful liar. As an analysis of our post-truth politics, it really works.

However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it remains true that he is also trying to get away with something. There is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly craftsman, some kind of laxity which resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline.  

It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth – this indifference to how things really are – that I regard as of the essence of bullshit. 

Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth. On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need requires…It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art.

The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor co conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction… He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. 

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a personís obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled – whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others – to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. 

No wonder I'm thinking apocalyptic thoughts.

So yes, I went off to London for this Writing Politicians Event. Before that my cool and clever young cousin took me to a glamorous restaurant: we were the only customers who lacked a limo and chauffeur outside, and couldn't discuss our yachts. You could tell it was a great restaurant because despite being a decent cook myself I had absolutely no idea how the various dishes were made. Then we headed off to take in a matinee to cheer ourselves up. It was called The Truth, a French farce in which an incompetent adulterer discovers that his wife, lover and her husband (the protagonist's best friend, who is sleeping with his wife) are slightly more competent adulterers than him. Sparkling, well-constructed and feather light, it promised to be a grand distraction. Only it gradually dawned on me that it was a comical allegory of the British Ruling Classes. There's Boris, betraying his friend Dave. Here's Michael, betraying Boris… et cetera ad infinitum.

Then off I went to the British Academy, the only branch of academia outside Oxbridge that had hundreds of millions of pounds to spare, judging by its accommodation round the corner from Buckingham Palace. It was billed as 'Writing Political Leaders' and featured Dobbs talking to an Oxford Professor of Chinese History. I went because I'm researching politicians' writing at the moment and I had Dobbs on my panel at the Cheltenham Festival. I was hoping to meet other people researching the same thing, and also a tiny bit annoyed that I hadn't been asked to be part of the panel.

Turns out that it wasn't an analytical or academic event at all: it was a mutual love-in for old and young Tories, and my God the larval Tories were terrifying: 18-22 year-olds dressed as their great-grandfathers keen to learn how they too could be Francis Urquhart or Frank Underwood. Certainly a future Tory leader was in the crowd – probably one or two of them have joined the race this morning. It was also rather creepy that not a single female said a word throughout the 90 minutes. Margaret Thatcher was reverentially discussed (Dobbs candidly and admiringly said that she dispensed with his services ruthlessly a week before the 1987 election and Edwina Currie's books got a passing mention), but this was an event for, by and about the patriarchy. Still, on such a dramatic day it was interesting to be surrounded by Tories: they had nothing interesting to say on the subject (Dobbs: 'I don't know whether Boris and Michael are acting out of principle or for personal reason, it's usually the latter') but their very demeanour was instructive. Dobbs wheeled out the same anecdotes he had at Cheltenham and there were no interesting questions. Not exactly up to the level I expected from the British Academy but I suppose they're interested in maintaining links to power. And at least I learned that the field is still free for my amazing revelations…

Who knows what fresh horrors this afternoon will bring?

Cor blimey guvnor

Evening everybody. What a day it's been. I've worked hard on the conference version of our jazz in contemporary fiction paper ready for next week, and edited the photographs of my trip to That London for my cousin's 21st birthday. Apart from the party, I mostly spent the weekend walking round Greenwich and Blackheath grinding my teeth in pure envy.

I also – you'll be surprised to learn – visited a book shop. Sadly, though the stock was magnificent (I've never seen so many Beverley Nichols novels in one place), the prices were insanely aspirational, judging by the ones I already own. £30 for a decent copy of Stephen Spender's Forward From Liberalism in the Left Book Club edition? Mine was £3.50.

That said, I couldn't leave empty-handed. I picked up some lovely rarities: a volume of poetry by Angry Young Man novelist and poet (and son of Stoke) John Wain, melodramatically entitled Weep Before God; a collection of poems by Rex Warner, the celebrated absurdist interwar novelist, and an undated Edwardian one-act play, called Trouble At The Telephone ('A Serio-Comic Sketch for Lady and Gentleman') by Campbell Rae-Brown, who had some work filmed in the 1920s. I couldn't resist this early foray into techno-fear art. I'll let you know what it's like when I get round to reading it. Sadly, they didn't have any copies of the racist and misogynist plays advertised in the back, such as The Suffragettes: A Farcical Sketch by E MaKeig Jones, or The Black Rivals: Five Negro Characters, which appears to be a collection of comic songs.

More tomorrow. If you're very good I'll show you some pretty pictures of Cockney squirrels. 

Back from the Smoke

Afternoon all. I've just finished a class on Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, which is appropriate because I spent the weekend partying with family and friends. It was my nephew's christening so it was off to That London, staying with my old university friend Adam and Katie his wife. We dined and drank to excess, then had a day of proper tourism: up the London Eye, a walk along the South Bank, then more gustatory pleasures. On the Sunday it was off to beautiful Greenwich for the christening, conducted at a  Catholic church which was both Happy and Clappy. The guitars were only drowned out by the unruly children and the dog someone brought to Mass: it seemed to enjoy the music even less than I did…

So - a few photos taken along the Thames. I won't bore you with the family portraits, but the whole set is here. Otherwise, click these to enlarge.

I wanted to go up the Shard to do some photography but it's booked up for months

St. Paul's illuminated in a shaft of sunlight. God smiles on photographers.

Curiously enough, Adam gave me a V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes costume that very evening!

We saw these parkour kids on the Thames 'beach' so I fired off a few shots

On the roof of the old GLC County Hall: one of the best views in the world.

Beautifully lit, and spotted by my companions. No doubt some urban evangelical will nick this for the cover of a patronising street bible.

The book stalls on the South Bank. One of my favourite places. 

This child stole my lens cap!

Another shot of the book stalls.

What might have been

For every grand, beautiful or barkingly arrogant/insane/phallic building that gets built (yes, The Shard, I'm looking at you - hopefully you'll be the setting for countless The Towering Inferno or Mad Max rip-offs), there are countless alternative proposals.

I've just bought a fascinating old book, London As It Might Have Been, which collects rejected proposals for urban renewal. Some are beautiful. Some are unhinged. All reflect the socio-cultural context beautifully. For instance, the pyramids featured below all echo the Egypt-mania which gripped British society firstly after their involvement in Napoleon's Egyptian defeat, a deal which included lots of Egyptian antiquities finding their way to London (ahem) and the later British occupation of Egypt in 1882.

I don't necessarily think that any of these schemes would have been better or worse than what we have now - but they're certainly fascinating culturally and architecturally. First up: two proposals for Tower Bridge, and the final choice:

This is the proposal made in 1943. It's very Art Nouveau + Modernist, but it's also hugely optimistic: Holden drew this during the bombing campaign against London, so proposing a crystal glass tower suggests that he sees a peaceful future in the midst of the war.

Tower Bridge - a a beautiful but weird mix of Victorian mechanical engineering and medievalism, which is pretty typical of the period. Very British: hiding the modern under a 'heritage' skin. 

Here are the Pyramids: the first celebrates defeating the perfidious French and would have rivalled St. Paul's Cathedral for size at a cost of £1m in 1815. It would have been built at Trafalgar Square. The second is simply an ingenious way of storing London's dead. 

Once the Great Exhibition closed, people wondered what to do with the vast Crystal Palace, built entirely in sections in Smethwick and Birmingham.  

Here's one wonderful, ridiculous, steampunk suggestion:

Sadly, the building was simply moved to a part of Sydenham and the area renamed Crystal Palace. It burned down in 1936.

What of other public venues? As we all know, Wembley is a seedy area dominated by a bland Global-PoMo stadium monstrosity. But in the late 19th century, plans were afoot to beat the French (again) after their Eiffel Tower grabbed the limelight. All sorts of plans were put forward, but the winner was, well, a slightly taller copy of the Eiffel Tower set amongst an ornamental garden. 

The first 150ft or so got built, then the money ran out and that was it for North London's beautification. The stump was dynamited in 1907 and where it stood is now the pitch of the national football stadium. Not that the British are alone in not quite getting round to things: when the French gave the USA the Statue of Liberty, the bits and piece lay around in various exhibitions and parks in France and the US for years until the ungrateful Yankees donated enough dollar pieces to finally put the damn thing together. 

Finally, what of transport? Well, the trend was techno-determinist: the machines would shape the city. So this 1960s proposal envisaged monorails above Regent Street (cool, say I), while in the early days of flight, sticking airports on top of city centre railway stations seemed very efficient. 

Liverpool Street rail and air station

The combined Liverpool Street railway station and heli-pad

The Greater London Council's vision of Regent Street

It's easy to laugh at some of the more outlandish proposals, but some are genuinely visionary and quite a lot of them - especially the Haussmann-esque plans to demolish most of central London to accommodate government offices and royal palaces remind us that architects should never be left unsupervised. The airport/rail stations look to me like Albert Speer's plans to replace Berlin with the Nazi planned city of Germania, in which colossal scale replaces all humanist values. What's missing in many of the visions presented in London As It Might Have Been is any social vision. Where are Londoners - rich and poor - meant to live and work? Human interaction is forgotten. 

This isn't a feature simply of rejected plans. Look at the Shard: it radiates contempt for the little people toiling below. It's a mix of a massive penis and Bentham's Panopticon. Likewise the isolated, gated communities of Docklands and the Olympic Park: they shut out the poor and privilege fear and paranoia (as Ballard's Kingdom Come and Millennium People explore). We're living in an era in which architecture follows the whims of bg money: defensiveness, arrogance, disconnection and sterility are the key signifieds of all those plate glass palaces set beyond high gates and guards. Architecture is the expression of our fantasies and fears - but it's also the creator of the same emotions. 

Recipe for a riot

I don't know, take one measly holiday and the social fabric falls apart. But people of Tottenham, looting ALDI? Have some ambition, for Christ's sake.

Last year, a lot of people expressed their disquiet at the police tactic of 'kettling' student protesters - confining them for long periods, in poor conditions, for no apparent reason - leading to anger and mindless violence. 

What have we done if not 'kettled' our urban poor and ethnic minorities? Insane property prices, low pay, racial discrimination, poor education and political failure have concentrated those denied a stake in society in desolate quarters, kept in place by a racist or (at best) disconnected police force, neglected by the institutions meant to improve their lot. Regardless of your view of what they've done this week, it's not unexpected. 

OK, how do these things happen? Well, there's always a strong dash of opportunism: the element that likes a) free stuff and b) a bit of violence, though they're likely to be at the back of the queue for a truncheon sandwich. Along with the political opportunists and the 'community leaders' who always emerge on these occasions.

But below the surface, all the ingredients are there. At a really basic level, long hot summers produce tense situations that can easily turn violent - New York in the 1970s was a classic set of circumstances.

At the risk of reinforcing my reputation for being a wet liberal (undeserved: I'm a hardline lefty), I will say that institutional contempt and deprivation lead to riots. The specific cause is bad enough - a young man shot dead by the police. But if the police had a reputation for talking before they fired, for treating the poor and brown the same as they treat the rich and white, this riot would never have got off the ground. It's largely not what the police did this time - we don't yet even know what that was - it's what they've done with Menezes and with all the ethnic kids who get stopped whenever they leave their homes.

Add to this the government's withdrawal of youth services in the name of 'austerity': thousands of school kids, often lacking social restraints provided by structured communities, on the streets with nothing to do for 3 months, are likely to find themselves in trouble. To them, government isn't a provider of services: it's simply oppressive bodies such as the police - aggressive and not looking very like their community.

Does this mean I think it's OK to trash the place? No, obviously not - apart from anything else, it's totally unfocussed. Aldi and Carpetright aren't the primary element, unless someone's going to claim that this was an anti-capitalist uprising. I wish it were, but it isn't.

Funnily enough, I've been reading Butterworth's The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents. The problem facing the 19th-century anarchists as they sat in London slums working out the future was the split between 'positive' anarchists, who looked forward to a (possibly violent revolution) and the 'individual' anarchists, who seemed to use the doctrine as an excuse for the worst kinds of terrorist outrages.

To some, outbursts of the most savage violence were natural consequences of the way the underclass were treated - an argument which you might well hear in the coming days. To others, individual murders or bombings became indelibly associated with violence: a great shame given the wonderful premise of anarchism (that without institutional oppression, humanity was capable of altruism, leading to a co-operative paradise).

I'm somewhere in-between. Some of these rioters are the people who'll trash anything, for fun. Some are freelance capitalists, taking their opportunities wherever they can. Some will be politically motivated, though lacking the intellectual skills for concerted, directed action, and despairing at politicians' inability to articulate the needs of a community which has largely been abandoned by the state: just like 19th-Century London

In other respects, the situation is quite different. Malato wrote this of London in The Delights of Exile:

Oh, great metropolis of Albion, your atmosphere is sometimes foggier than reason allows, your ale insipid and your cooking in general quite execrable, but you show respect of for individuality and are welcoming to the émigrés. Be proud of these two qualities and keep them.

Ah well. The beer and food have certainly improved, but we've been conditioned to hate and fear émigrés - leading to the kind of social decay we see this week.

My solution? Not the 'infantile Leftism' Lenin described, which sees immediate violence as the solution to everything. Instead, we need William Morris's formula: 'Agitate. Educate. Organise'.

Here's some John Henry Mackay, cited in Butterworth's book:

Like and enormous black, motionless, giant Kraken, the poverty of London lies there in lurking silence and encircles with its tentacles the life and wealth of the City and of the West End'

and here's Morris himself:

Affluent London was 'so terrified of the misery it has created that at all hazards it must be swept out of sight'. 

This is what we've done: created massive areas of our cities left to rot. In them, the low-paid (the majority of officially poor people are in paid employment) and the unemployed. Next to them, vanity projects, 'iconic' buildings, gated 'communities' (they're not really). It's Ballard's airport landscape writ large: shiny surfaces, anti-crowd architecture, fast transport from investment bank to gated bourgeois ghetto with no smelly, sticky contact with the poor in-between. The bankers don't even see their cleaners: daylight is for the rich, midnight for the poor.

Last year, a lot of people expressed their disquiet at the police tactic of 'kettling' student protesters - confining them for long periods, in poor conditions, for no apparent reason - leading to anger and violence.

One more thing: the EDL smash things up wherever they go, without the kind of coverage this riot is getting. Why? Because the media laps up pictures of angry black folk. It fits with the framing they've acquired from history: they always present black people as naturally violent, inarticulate and so on, whereas white rioters are always 'bad apples'. Like Breivik being insane while Islamic killers are 'ruthless/organised etc.'

Don't feed this prejudice. Don't riot. Demonstrate. If you must use violence (and I'm not advocating it), target your anger. You know how these pictures are used by media and politicians. Don't give them easy targets.

This didn't happen.

The head of the Metropolitan Police says it didn't:

the Metropolitan police chief said tactics "did not involve charging the crowd".

Definitely didn't happen. In case it doesn't happen again, a pocketful of marbles may come in very useful.

Whose city?

No sooner do I buy a book about the privatisation of our urban space than this story pops up: Londoners will lose access to 60 miles of road during the Olympics, to provide exclusive lanes for Olympic athletes, officials… and 'marketing partners'.

I'm all for getting athletes and officials to their competitions on time - I'm hoping to be involved with the fencing in some way - but allowing salesmen and advertising shills to lord it over the citizens makes me think of 'democratic' Russia's special lanes for the Soviet ruling classes, a habit that hasn't yet died. I'm also horrified that organisations such as McDonald's are permitted to become 'partners'.

I hope London's drivers, pedestrians and cyclists ignore this disgraceful insult to citizens and taxpayers. Rebel!

The 'marketers' can travel in blimps. They already look down on us.

Carriage crazy

I'm still captivated by the ads in this 1858 edition of The Times. In many ways, we haven't changed much - just as there's a cool car culture now (hopefully dying), there was a cool carriage culture, with varieties such as the Clarence, Phaeton, Sociable, Landau, Brougham and Barouche. Some of the existing lines (one lady owner) are clearly older than I thought:

CLARENCE to be DISPOSED OF, the property of a lady, who from ill-health is incapable of using it again. It will consequently be sold a bargain. May be seen at 71, Great Queen-street, Lincoln's-inn fields.

SOCIABLE, 75 Guineas ; Brougham, 75 Guineas. To prevent trouble and loss of time, particulars are given. Sociable–head removes. Brougham–circular front. Cost £140 each. Elegant and scarcely soiled. A lady breaking up her establishment. 29, Davies-street, Berkeley-square.

UNDER the PATRONAGE of Her Most Gracious MAJESTY, and the Kings of SARDINIA and PORTUGAL.– Messrs. Lenny and Co., coachbuilders and harnessmakers, 20, 21, 22, and 23, North-end, Croydon, beg to call attention to their NEW REGISTERED HOLFORD, forming a complete close carriage, with wicker or plain panels, and weighing only 5 1/2cwt., suitable for a 14 hands horse. They are building for full-sized horses, single and double seated, lighter by hundreds of pounds than any other close carriage built. N.B. Carriages of all kinds built to order, or on hire, with liberty to purchase, and for exportation ; also their cheap, light, and elegant Croydon basket carriages, in every shape and size.

Let's not forget the children:

STUDY your CHILDREN'S HEALTH, and buy one of HILL'S PATENT SAFETY PERAMBULATORS, at the wholesale price. Invalid carriages in variety. Illustrated price list for one stamp.–Hill's manufactory, 212, Piccadilly: established as coachmakers 30 years.

Then you need to take your carriage out for a slap-up feed amidst the Great Stink, or perhaps on holiday:

THE BEST DINNERS in London are at the ROYAL WINE SHADES, 5, Leicester-square, consisting of six soups, six sorts of fish, and eight joints, cheeses and celery, all for 1s. 6d. per head, from 2 o'clock until half-past 8.

STATE OF THE THAMES.–J. D. ROBERTS begs to announce that the bad state of the Thames has never been perceptible at the ARTICHOKE, but that the pure air for which Blackwall has always been celebrated is still equally delightful and refreshing–Artichoke Tavern, Blackwall, July, 1858.

The Artichoke was an ancient pub, soon demolished for the Blackwall Tunnel. Its air may not have been as pure as advertised: a guano processing plant was located nearby…