Hidden London: Do you need the service?

I love these old petrol stations (this one, above, is in East Sheen). One of the best used to be on Store Street, WC1; the Bloomsbury service station was a lovely, idiosyncratic sight that had stood in the centre of London since 1926. Subject to redevelopment, the bland new structure alludes to its more illustrious predecessor. I quite like the nearby mural but suspect it isn't made of real tiles.

A hit and Amis

Martin Amis's magnificent, most-recent novel, The Pregnant Widow (cover detail, pictured), is largely set in the Italian countryside in 1970 but there are some lovely London bits. When central character Keith Nearing's stay in a castle with at least three beautiful young women ends, Amis reflects: 'This summer was the climax of his youth. It had come and gone, it was over... Now he thought of London and its million girls.'

Forty-seven pages later: 'He went out among the women of London. And it was the strangest thing. Each and every one of them hated him already.'

A rare theatre post

While the Palace Theatre was (relatively) dark recently, passersby in central London could see the building's exterior unhindered by gaudy advertising (above). Before the current primary-coloured umbrellas had gone up, there was also the chance to see backstage as new show Singin' in the Rain, which opens on 4 February, was installed:

Crafty!

London's V&A celebrates craftsmanship in an exhibition that runs until 2 January 2012. Power of Making is great fun and includes a cake in the shape of a baby, a shark sculpture made from recycled tyres and a 'crochetdermy' bear.

Produced with the Crafts Council, the show highlights the skills of gunsmiths or the beauty of ceramics, often creating contrasts by updating traditional vocations. For example, when the market for ecclesiastical wear began to dry up, Poland's Koniakow Cooperative turned its talents instead to making lingerie, including the handmade lace G-string on display (pictured).

There's a strand where these developments achieve the absurd: take Dave Bradbury's Bill Bailey book, which is carved from stone. Australian artist Patricia Piccinini imagines safety wear for genetically engineered creatures - her double-headed 'hornet' crash helmet could be a wholly impractical device for an adult and child to cram into together, for instance.

Jeremy Hutchison took this approach to everyday objects to its extreme in the recent Saatchi New Sensations exhibition. The artist contacted factories around the world and asked them to provide him with an example of their work that was altered in such a way as to make it unusable. (It's important to state he was not after a product rejected because it was faulty.)

As part of the project, he presents the pieces with the correspondence built up over the process (pictured), which shows many factories were understandably puzzled by his intentions - endearingly, some were unwilling to compromise their hard-won reputations by making something that didn't work. (An example of this approach in the news around the same time as the show is the story of the man who ordered two differently sized slippers but, when they arrived, one was a size 1,450 rather than 14.5, though this may have been a PR stunt.) Other responses reference the joy people experienced at giving their creative input while being relieved of routine constraints.

One of my favourite pieces is a pair of sunglasses with multiple bridges, making it unwearable; elsewhere pencils lack lead or a hat is sealed so it cannot be worn. The results are suitably surrealistic - there is a solid pipe, after Magritte, which cannot be smoked. The master of the found object is referenced, too: Duchamp's snow shovel became art by being displayed in a gallery but could still function in the manner for which it was designed; Hutchison, or his craftsmen, render it unusable by inverting the shovel on the handle.

Related: the art of Mark I'Anson

Hidden London: The Poppy Factory

Amid the continuing hooha over wearing poppies you might be surprised to learn that the British Legion's annual symbol of remembrance is made in London. The Poppy Factory (pictured below) on the Thames in Richmond makes up to 45 million poppies every year and 100,000 wreaths, as well as organising the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

Poppies were first sold to raise money to help support ex-servicemen and women in the early 1920s and the Richmond site was established in 1925. The factory employs more than 40 disabled staff with links to the services, as well as supporting others who work from home or in other companies.

They run daily tours where you can see the work and memorabilia associated with the factory, including a 1922 letter from Major George Howson in which he describes his feelings about the project. 'I have been given a cheque for £2,000 to make poppies with. It is a large responsibility and will be very difficult... I consider the attempt ought to be made if only to give the disabled their chance.'

Related: Richmond's Chilean revolutionary

The London Fiction Series

Ten years ago, publisher Harvill launched the London Fiction Series of 'lost' classic novels set in the city. The first four books included Henry Green's Caught and Capital by Maureen Duffy but sales were disappointing and I don't think any other titles were added.

Each of the books featured a wonderful new introduction - I particularly recommend writer Iain Sinclair's excellent opener to The Lowlife (1963) by Alexander Baron, even if you are weary of Sinclair's Hackney shtick. (Baron's elderly widow was at the series launch, held in Brick Lane's then derelict Old Truman Brewery.) The book is great on the East End: 'Hackney isn't the East End - that's the mark of the outsider, when you hear someone call Hackney the East End. The East End starts two miles down the road, across the border of Bethnal Green.'

The lowlife is Baron's narrator, gambler Harryboy Boas, whose apparently guilt-free lifestyle hides a central secret. Harry is also notable for his literary tastes: early on, he treats himself to a set of the translated works of Emile Zola in Charing Cross Road ('This Zola is a terrific writer. He can be tougher than Mickey Spillane, and when he gets on to sex he's red hot').

At the library one afternoon, Harry goes 'in to look for some thrillers. I like these books, the way they scratch on the nerves as I lie in bed. Chandler and Hammett are my favourites. You don't get writing like theirs nowadays.' In the end: 'I picked up a couple of Simenons.' Good man.

The other Jewish writer in the series was Gerald Kersh, whose large family lived on Teddington High Street. The writer's profile states: 'At seven he wrote his first novel and published it privately bound in his father's brocade waistcoat.' His first novel proper, Jews without Jehovah (1934), was inspired by his family and had to be withdrawn on the day of publication when he was sued by four uncles and a cousin.

In the introduction to the London Fiction Series' 2001 reprint of Fowlers End (originally 1957), Michael Moorcock writes: 'Twickenham was never the hottest crucible of the city. But Kersh did what all suburban young men of spirit and lust did. He got the bus into Soho.' Moorcock continues: 'As a later Fleet Street prodigy drinking in Soho, I staggered in and out of the same pubs and clubs and... discovered the pleasures of Old Compton Street, Dean Street and Meard Street.' He concludes: 'Nobody has told more or better Soho tales or described the place and its people so well.'

Kersh was hugely prolific as a journalist and novelist - he's best known for Night and the City (1938), which was filmed with Richard Widmark (pictured). Lately there has been something of a market for London-based novels, old and new. (Peter Watts writes about Baron's reissued 1969 novel King Dido here and here.) Some 30 years after the deaths of Kersh and Green, the writers in the London Fiction Series managed to be ahead of the times.

Hidden London: gone for a Burton

This mausoleum designed to look like an Arab tent (pictured above) at St Mary Magdalene, Mortlake, is the burial place of traveller and linguist Sir Richard Burton (1821-90) and his wife Isabel. Sir Richard translated the One Thousand and One Nights into English, and commissioned translations of the Kama Sutra and The Perfumed Garden; on his death, Isabel burned other documents she deemed unfit for publication, presumably because they were a bit rude.

She commissioned this final resting place, and a stained-glass window in his memory in the church. Another stained-glass window at the back of the mausoleum has been destroyed by vandals - a ladder now leads to a glass window in the carefully restored tomb's roof. The picture below shows Isabel's mahogany coffin on the left (she died in 1895), while Sir Richard's steel coffin is just visible to the right.

Fans of 19th-century Orientalism may also be interested in the Kilmorey Mausoleum, which is hidden behind a wall on St Margaret's Road, Isleworth. The monument was built by Francis Jack Needham, Second Earl of Kilmorey, for his mistress Priscilla, who was around 36 years his junior and had become his ward at the age of five. When she died in 1854, Lord Kilmorey had architect Henry Kendall create an Egyptian-style memorial, which was originally built in Brompton Cemetary.

The tomb, which was moved twice and also contains Kilmorey's remains (though not those of his two wives), was carved from pink Scottish granite to resemble Egyptian stone from Aswan. There is a theory that Kilmorey hoped to be able to communicate with Priscilla after her death; the Earl is said to have dressed in white and had his servants push him in his coffin through an underground tunnel to the tomb 'for practice', according to Egyptologist Dr Jasmine Day. The tunnel was rediscovered in 1966 .

By the by, if you go to St Mary Magdalene, do visit the very welcoming St Mary the Virgin nearby. This lovely church may hold the final resting place of Elizabethan necromancer Dr John Dee, who lived for some 30 years in Mortlake.

Hidden London: stuffed, pickled, embalmed

When considering the form of your final peace, you may wish to heed the indignities suffered by these mammals in our rationalist capital:

Stuffed

Forest Hill's Horniman Museum is famous for its overstuffed walrus - filled by a taxidermist in the 1870s unfamiliar with the beast's multiple folds.

Pickled

It's not the first thing you expect to see on entering a museum: a jar full of pickled moles, reminiscent of a competition to guess the number of sweets. UCL's Grant Museum boasts all sorts of zoological curiosities but don't, as I did, go immediately after lunch. (Thank you, though, to the enthusiastic woman who encouraged me to smell inside the cabinets!)

Embalmed

UCL has an even stranger corpse on its premises, however. Jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham instructed that his body be preserved upon his death in 1832 and there he is, perched in a glass cabinet. The head is made of wax - the real appendage having suffered all forms of humiliation - but his dressed body remains, at the end of the south cloisters in the university's main building.

Let it rain

Among those who have looked for reasons for the (temporary?) cessation of riots in England, some commentators have pointed to the ever-reliable British weather: it rained. Downpours herald the end to the violence in Colin MacInnes's 1959 novel, Absolute Beginners; as his hero waits for an escape flight to Oslo, down comes the rain: 'I held up my arms in it, and opened my mouth and cried, "More! More! More! That'll stop it… That'll do what the ruling orders can't do! That's the only thing to keep the whites and blacks and yellows and blues… indoors!"'

Reaction to the riots is all too familiar: 'in the leader sections… they were still on about unrestricted immigration… They said Welfare was an urgent consideration, and what was needed was a lot more experienced welfare officers to iron out awkward misunderstandings… the magistrate had advised people to stay indoors at night… Best news of all - really heartening - was that the cabinet minister in charge of home security had received reports of all these happenings at his country house, and was studying them closely, and said the utmost strictness will be observed in the impartial enforcement of the law.'

Ultimately, though, 'so far as the government and top cats who control things were concerned, these riots might just not have happened at all, or have been in some other country.' In MacInnes's west London there are Teds, Hoorays, the new immigrants and even newer teenagers (the 'absolute beginners' of the title): 'And what a time it's been in England, what a period of fun and hope and foolishness and sad stupidity!'

A friend also highlighted this lovely extract from Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage.

Three great European artist's museums

1. Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris

Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) converted this space - pictured - to show off his fantastic work, an example of which was used recently on the cover of Roberto Bolaño's gargantuan novel 2666. The artist's apartment and Grand Tour souvenirs are preserved as he wanted, while paintings fold out of wall-mounted holders.

14 rue de la Rochefoucauld, 9th; closed Tuesdays. €5.

2. Sir John Soane Museum, London

On a grander yet not less intimate scale, architect Soane (1753-1837) modelled this incredible venue to house his collection of books, sculpture and drawings for 'amateurs and students'. An act of parliament preserved the space after his death as close as possible to his intentions.

13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2; open Tuesday-Saturday. Free.

3. Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen

The name Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) may not ring any bells but his grand sculptures can be found in many of Europe's major cities. Denmark's oldest gallery, above, was specifically designed to house the oeuvre he bequeathed to the state - the sculptor's grave is in the central courtyard.

2 Bertel Thordvaldsens Plads, Slotsholmen; closed Mondays. 40kr.

If you happen to read this and can recommend other great artist's museums around the world in the comments below, please do!

Hidden London: Richmond's Chilean revolutionary

Late last summer, as part of celebrations to mark 200 years of Chilean independence, a group of dignitaries gathered beside Richmond Bridge to commemorate the man who contributed to the country's liberation from Spain. Bernardo O'Higgins was the illegitimate son of a Spanish officer himself born in Ireland, Ambrosio O'Higgins, and Chilean Isabel Riquelme. The couple never married and Bernardo had little to do with his father.

From the age of 16 to 18, Bernardo was sent to school at Clarence House, The Vineyard, in Richmond (pictured above). In London he is said to have become instilled with a sense of national pride and, in 1810, he became one of those who supported independence in his country. At last year's ceremony at the site of this bust in O'Higgins Square (top), the Chilean chargé d'affaires, Rodrigo Espinosa, said: 'Our country is celebrating her 200 years of independence and one could say that, to a certain extent, the whole story could have started here, in leafy Richmond.'

Related: revolutionary watering holes in wartime London

Hidden London: Anton Walbrook's grave

Emigré Austrian actor Anton Walbrook featured as the master of ceremonies in Max Ophüls' La ronde (1950) and was a particular favourite of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, starring in 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and, most memorably, as the impresario Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes (1948), alongside Moira Shearer. He manages to be sad and dashing, which is probably why I like him.

Walbrook's final resting place (pictured top) is in the extension of St-John-at-Hampstead, NW3, tucked neatly beside the grave of George du Maurier (above). Both can be seen easily from Church Row, while nearby lie the graves of actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Kay Kendall; the main churchyard is home to the tombs of two Johns, Constable and Harrison (below, click for larger version), inventor of the marine chronometer.

Related: Jean Cocteau murals off Leicester Square

Hidden London: Jean Cocteau in the West End

I was once lucky enough to visit the sixteenth-century Saint-Pierre chapel in the south of France, famous for its murals, painted in the mid-1950s by Jean Cocteau. The French writer, artist and filmmaker was inspired, I seem to remember, by the connection between the fishing town (the chapel had been used as storage for fish until its restoration) and Christ's disciple as a fisher of men and fisherman himself, plus Django Reinhardt. There are some great pictures of it here.

If you can't travel that far don't worry, for there's another Cocteau mural just off Leicester Square, next door to the Prince Charles cinema. Cocteau completed a few of these works towards the end of his life and, in 1959, he tackled a side chapel in the Church of Notre Dame de France, newly rebuilt after it had been destroyed by bombing in World War II. There are all sorts of conspiracy theories surrounding the artist's imagery but look out for his self-portrait, turning away from the cross. There's a stream of photos here.

Related: literary lives behind Charing Cross Station

Hidden London: human fat for sale

Reporting plans by Sir David Attenborough - 'the most trusted person in Britain ' - to develop the abandoned pub next door to his home in Richmond, Surrey, the Daily Mail fails to mention the property's grisly link to a notorious crime. The 'Barnes mystery' attracted attention when human body parts were found in a box in the Thames - eventually the trail led to a disaffected, alcoholic maid, Kate Webster, who was hanged for killing her mistress.

Webster went to work for Julia Thomas at 2 Vine Cottages, Park Road, Richmond, in January 1897. Webster had been in and out of prison over the years and though she and Mrs Thomas initially got on well, their relationship soon deteriorated. In a row after drinking, Webster is said to have attacked her employer and strangled her; the maid then chopped up Mrs Thomas's body and boiled many of the parts.

She disposed of some in a box from Hammersmith Bridge - a coal man who found it the next morning reported his discovery at Barnes police station, hence the crime's popular nickname. In an even more grim development, Webster is said to have sold the human body fat at the Hole in the Wall pub on Park Road for use as dripping.

The ensuing trial was complicated by the lack of Mrs Thomas's head but a recent news story reveals a human skull was found during work to redevelop the Hole in the Wall as part of David Attenborough's home. Unfortunately, I can't find confirmation that this was the missing piece of the widow's body, though Attenborough has received permission to turn the former pub's beer garden into a 'wildlife haven'.

UPDATE On 5 July it was confirmed that the skull belonged to Julia Thomas.

Related: naked ladies in Twickenham

Hidden London: Craven Street, WC1

You're likely lost, or looking for the College of Optometrists, to stumble upon this unprepossessing street, hemmed in as it is by Charing Cross station, the Strand and Embankment. But a few plaques commemorate the literary minds that have passed through.

For nearly 20 years from 1757, Benjamin Franklin lived at No 36, during which time he wrote extensively (including starting his autobiography in 1771), attempted to mediate between Britain and America, was postmaster for the colonies, and pursued scientific and medical discoveries, including charting the Gulf Stream. Franklin returned to America in 1775 in time for revolution, and his Georgian home is now a museum (above). Bones found during the conservation and thought to belong to an anatomy school on the site are on show in the basement.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Herman Melville toured Europe to negotiate publishing contracts, when he stayed in a boarding house at No 25 (above). In spring 1827, 29-year-old German poet Heinrich Heine (his date of birth appears to be wrong on this plaque, below) stayed at another hostel at No 32 when he travelled to England to escape controversy following the publication of a second volume of his popular travel journals, Reisebilder. (The year had also seen the publication of his Buch der Lieder, one of the most successful poetry books ever published in Germany.)

Heine had a mixed experience of the capital, reflected by visitors to this day no doubt: 'It is snowing outside, and there is no fire in my chimney... I am very peevish and ill to boot,' he wrote to a friend. 'London has surpassed all my expectations as to its magnificence, but I have lost myself. Living is terribly dear, so far I have spent more than a guinea a day... It is so fearfully damp and uncomfortable here, and no one understands me, and no one understands German.'

Hidden London: naked ladies in Twickenham

When Mohamed al-Fayed unveiled his kitsch tribute to Michael Jackson at Craven Cottage, Peter Watts posted on London's worst statues. I forgot to suggest this extraordinary collection installed in York House Gardens, Twickenham, by the building's last private owner, Parsee prince Sir Ratan Tata, who paid £600 for them in 1909. The statuary is said to have been brought to Britain from Italy by financier Whitaker Wright, who killed himself using cyanide - in court - on being found guilty of fraud in 1904.

Following Tata's death, the main building was acquired in 1924 by the London Borough of Richmond and Twickenham for its council offices but the statues were left to fend for themselves, covered with obscene graffiti and apparently painted over in the Second World War so German bombers couldn't use moonlight reflected off the white Carrara marble to guide them up the Thames. The figures were restored in the late 1980s - this lady seems unperturbed by the plight of her friend:

Dark Times in Hackney

Daniel Kramb gave a reading of his first novel, Dark Times, at the lovely Sutton House Book Brunchers yesterday. Set against the backdrop of the financial crisis, the book is steeped in Hackney's streets, bars and clubs. Here's an interview we did earlier this year:

What was the inspiration for the book? When I started writing Dark Times, back in 2007, I set out to tell a story about four East Londoners. Getting into these people was a way for me to make sense of my own confusion, my place in the world. Then, in 2008, “the crisis” hit. Suddenly, everything seemed to collapse but at the same time there was, I thought, a great chance in front of our eyes. I wanted to capture that particular moment in time, and I wanted to tell the whole thing in a very intense, distinct style, which I had played around with for some time.

Dark Times has a very specific sense of place - how important is that to you? Very important. The book has four characters but the most important one might well be its fifth, and that’s East London, or Hackney, more specifically. It’s the one aspect of the book that was never in question, I wanted to write a love letter to this part of the city.

At one point in the book, you say, 'If you walked a street often enough, it became part of you'. How are your characters formed by their environment? That’s Sarah, the journalist in the book, and at that point she has started to walk up and down Stoke Newington High Street, something I used to do a lot. Whether we consciously feel it or not, I think we are formed - or at least greatly influenced - by our surroundings. It’s definitely true for the book’s characters: the idealistic Max, who is also a keen walker, is fed, if you like, by Clapton street life, and the park benches of Hackney Downs reinforce his constant state of waiting; Jonathan simply couldn’t function without the bars of Shoreditch and Dalston; for the struggling artist Lizzie, Ridley Road Market is both a source of great inspiration, and a constant reminder of her unstable, precarious life. But I think this is always a two-way process, a dialogue, between people and place.

You wrote a first draft of Dark Times when you lived in Hackney and then rewrote it when living abroad, in Amsterdam. How did that affect what you wrote? I think it helped: being taken out of your usual surroundings is always a kick-start for fresh thinking, so that was good for the rewriting process. More importantly, I started being terribly homesick for Hackney - it wasn’t about Amsterdam, I liked being there - but I had all these flashes of streets, sounds and smells hitting me out of nowhere. So I found myself sitting in a tiny attic overlooking the river Amstel, early in the morning, conjuring up the dirt of Dalston Lane, the coffee smell inside Café Oto, or the busy Shacklewell Lane junction seen from behind a late-night Turkish soup at Somine.

Dark Times is available on Amazon and at various bookstores (details in the first link on this post).

London on film: five great musicals

1. The Young Ones (1961)

Freewheeling fun as Cliff Richard's Nicky and chums, including Melvyn Hayes and The Shadows, use pirate radio to promote a fundraising concert to save their youth club. The catch? The evil property developer threatening their venue is Nicky's dad (played by Robert Morley). It spawned further big-screen outings for Cliff and The Shadows in quick succession: Summer Holiday (1963), Wonderful Life (1964) and Finders Keepers (1966). Key location: Paddington

2. My Fair Lady (1964)

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion premiered on Broadway in 1956. Original star Rex Harrison reprised his role as confirmed bachelor 'enry 'iggins for the film version, which also stars Audrey Hepburn, whose singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon. Key location: Covent Garden, pictured

3. Absolute Beginners (1986)

Pop video director and documentarist Julien Temple created a colourful 1950s London for this adaptation of the first book in Colin MacInnes's great trilogy. Musicians David Bowie, Ray Davies, Smiley Culture, Tenpole Tudor and Sade star and contribute to the soundtrack, among others. Leads Patsy Kensit and Eddie O'Connell are disappointing in a likeable, if mistimed, gamble. Key location: Soho

4. Mary Poppins (1964)

Never mind Dick Van Dyke's defining accent or Juile Andrews' terrifying mumsiness, this is all about David Tomlinson's lovely turn as the put-upon banker who doesn't dare turn his back on the corporate world. Includes songs Chim-Chim-Cheree, A Spoonful of Sugar and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Key location: the Bank of England

5. Oliver! (1968)

Lionel Bart's adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist took to the London stage in 1960, before being revived more recently in the West End with famous names in the controversial Fagin role. Star Mark Lester can be spotted as a schoolboy in François Truffaut's Ray Bradbury adaptation Fahrenheit 451 (1966). Key location: The Thames

Wartorn London (and elsewhere) on film

While writing about empty London, I realised I have a fascination for movies shot in post-war wastelands. In that post's Seven Days to Noon (1950), the central character hides among bomb-damaged buildings in the City. On another occasion I wrote about Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express (1948), much of which was filmed amid the devastation wrought by the allied bombing of Berlin and Frankfurt.

One year later, Orson Welles used real Viennese locations for The Third Man, including the Riesenrad, where Harry Lime famously damns 500 years of Swiss brotherly love. Roman Polanski used CGI to create one of cinema's most dramatic visions of war damage in The Pianist (2002), when the camera lifts to reveal the alien landscape of an annihilated Warsaw.

Back in London in 1949, a bombed site in Lambeth became the setting for Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico, although the war-damaged buildings featured in the film are sets. Stanley Kubrick stretched this MO further when he filmed the battle scenes for his Vietnam war movie Full Metal Jacket (1987) - in the Isle of Dogs and the Royal Docks (pictured).

London on film: the blank canvas

The most famous images of London on the big screen are fragmentary, illusory even: the blue door of Notting Hill (1999), Newman Passage at the beginning of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), the Bank of England in Mary Poppins (1964), or the rooftop sets from the same film. This may be because we have very little interaction with the capital's best-known icons in our day-to-day life, unlike the Disney-fied characters in the live-action version of 101 Dalmations (1996), say. The capital's streets don't always offer the best views of landmarks - unlike Paris - and, as amateur photographers know, it's difficult to capture the bustle of crowds on camera.

My favourite depiction of London's streets and buildings comes in the Boulting brothers' Seven Days to Noon (1950), when the city has to be evacuated after a scientist threatens to detonate a bomb if the government doesn't halt nuclear research. It may well have served as inspiration for the deserted scenes in Danny Boyle's zombie thriller 28 Days Later... 52 years later: compare the shot from 28 Days, top, with the - very small, sorry - image from Seven Days, below.

While these two films show off London's landmarks to best effect they also capture Londoners' psyche: in such metropolitan Hollywood disaster movies as Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) people are shown coming together in the face of apocalypse. We, on the other hand, want nothing less than the city to ourselves.

Related: London Underground on film