LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 25700, 25 January 1946, Page 10

LONDON TOPICS

VANISHING KHAKI CITY'S ANCIENT HALLS BLITZED (Prom Our Correspondent.) (By Air Mail.) . 7 LONDON, January 10. Caesar grows older and older, lamented G.B.S.'s classic hero, but the crowd in the Ap.pian Way is always the same age. For nearly six weary years of high adventure London's Appian Way, if that term may be applied to Utegent Street or Piccadilly, has been mainly young and overwhelmingly khaki, or light, or dark blue. But to-day you will meet a dozen civvie suits for every uniform in London's West Eend. Almost imperceptibly the tide of khaki has ebbed away. West End restaurants and hotels used to be nine-tenths khaki. To-day you may very well lunch or dine at any well-known place and see not a solitary soldier, sailor, or airman. The club cloakrooms used to be heaped with service overcoats and hats. Already these have become once more very outstanding objects among the civilian array. There is no doubt about it, so far as London's vistas are concerned, the legions are fading away. All that now remains as testimony to the second world war, apart from the blitz souvenirs, is an •epidemic of deeply sun-tanned faces and a pathetic parade of armless or legless relics of what Cleopatra called " the word's great snare." We are settling down to civvie street again rapidly. * » * #

Within the square mile that constitutes the City of London proper are 36 halls, most of them architecturally fine and all old, which were the headquarters of the ancient Livery Companies. It is more than a minor tragedy and outrage of the war that no fewer than 20 of the 36 have been totally destroyed by enemy action and must either be pulled down or remain largely uninhabitable. Amongst these tragic ruins, still beautiful even in their wreckage in some cases, is the hall of the Mercers' Guild, perhaps the finest architecturally of all, and the famous one historically associated with Lord Mayor Whittington. It dated back to the Middle Ages in part. Most of these stately homes of London commerce stand, or stood, oil sites of even more ancient predecessors, for the Great, Fire of London, now challenged for title by the spectacular conflagration of 1941, destroyed the first building erected by our craft guilds. These halls, even in ruins, are memorials of those centuries, before England was factoryised, when the apprentice system thrived in this island, and master craftsmen applied their skill with pride and zest. ,

Dame Laura Knight }ms gone to Nuremburg for a few weeks, making her first journey by air. She had the bright idea of painting a picture of the historic trial, and, when she put it up to the War Artists' Advisory Committee, it was promptly approved. Not only that, but Dame Laurai has been issued with additional clothes coupons in order to purchase the necessary extra warm apparel. She flew in a British Army plane, and took her easel with her. This will be duly erected in the Nuremburg courthouse, and Dame Laura will concentrate on securing accurate portraits of the outstanding (personnel concerned in the trial, including, of course, the Nazis and German commanders in the dock, These sketches she will later • work up into a picture of the scene, but this will have to wait until she gets back to her London studio. Dame Laura will no doubt bring hack some interesting gossip about the trial. Readers of her autobiography realise that the dame writes with almost as much facility as she paints. Nuremberg should afford a wonderful opportunity for both arts.

It is a long time since the House of Commons was described as " the most comfortable club in London." Conditions have so changed there, however, including the advent :of women M.P.s turning it into a cock-and-hen club, that possibly the description no longer applies. But it is certainly the cheapest place for meals in London, or perhaps anywhere else in this country, and now the Labour Government has decreed that its dining and tea rooms are to remain open, irrespective of whether Parliament is in session, all the year round. Since the Socialist victory at the General Election there has been a tremendous crush of visitors in the House of Commons, and the catering department has been hard pressed to keeipup with demands made on it. Home-made cakes and pastries are a speciality in the tea rooms, and one can dine quite reasonably for half the sum it would cost for much poorer food elsewhere. Hence, no doubt, the popularity, especially as there is no necessity to listen to the debates. Even a majority of M.P.s refrain from that.