It’s always been there, but you’ve never seen it before. The view, by which I really mean The View or That View. It’s there, the sprawling mass that is London, coming at you from every angle. In front, just across the river, is the City of London, that handsome, confident, super-rich “square mile” of banks and bankers, with, despite the financial crisis of 2008, its accompanying symbols of indomitability all clustered together: Tower 42 (formerly known as the Nat West Tower), 30 St Mary Axe (the “Gherkin”) and the City’s newest additions, the Leadenhall Building, a 225-metre, high-tech building also known as the “Cheesegrater”, and 20 Fenchurch Street (or “Walkie Talkie”). I’ve previously only seen the City from the top of The Monument – a measly 62m - and the London Eye - at 135m. It feels strange to be looking down on it.
Scan your eyes to the right and there’s the Tower of London, at the time I visit, decked out for a medieval style summer pageant. Tower Bridge, looking like a toy, spans the river to the right. Lift your gaze and there’s Canary Wharf, closer than you think. Turn to the left and there’s St Paul’s Cathedral, opposite that great cathedral of modern art, the Tate Modern. In the background is the Barbican; further left the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. Almost directly below the hotel is Southwark Cathedral and the tentacle-like swathe of tracks running into London Bridge station. The back of the hotel looks out over the less illustrious suburbs of south London, but still, it’s impressive, educative and, with the weather, ever-changing.
All of this is visible from the lowest point of the Shangri-La The Shard, the lobby and restaurants on level 35 of the 95-storey structure (fast lifts, slight ear-popping to be expected). It's just the right height to be able to see the surrounding buildings in sufficient detail to feel a visceral connection to them. The View From the Shard (www.theviewfromtheshard.com), the building's viewing platform on the 72nd floor, is London's highest, giving a view on a clear day of up to 55km and a vertigo-inspiring downward view, but from up here London looks more like a relief map. It's worth doing, but nothing beats the luxury of a panorama like that from your own bedroom.
My room, which is on the 48th floor (the hotel occupies floors 34 to 52 of the building and has 200 rooms), offsets its neutral decor with a similarly panoramic view to that from the lobby, but here I’m able to get up close to the glass all the way round - its slightly inward slant making you feel a real connection to the tapered structure. The bathroom features a heated floor and multi-function Toto toilet. From my fast-filling freestanding bath I’m able to look down on an army of dark-clad commuters swarming over London Bridge at the end of the day. They are more like slow-moving, dark-coloured ants or figures in an LS Lowry painting than the hell-bound souls referred to in TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, in which London Bridge is a bleak landmark. London is now the glittering home to more billionaires than any other city in the world and has been named the world’s most influential city by Forbes. From the City, where I did some of my journalism training, my eyes drift out to the Barbican Complex, a striking, now Grade II-listed Brutalist arts and residential scheme, where I went to primary school.
Back in the bedroom, which is stretched along what seems like a generous section of the 48th floor - sensibly, it’s long and narrow rather than square, with floor-to-ceiling windows making the most of every millimetre of view - I order room service and sit at a small table by the window, looking out at Canary Wharf, where I spent eight years working in what was then Europe’s tallest building, the 238m One Canada Square. Much has been made of the fact that from certain points in some rooms - including mine - you can see across into the next guestroom. I can’t see anyone in the next room and they would struggle to see me - and blinds can be drawn at any time. The night is blissfully quiet and dark, thanks to blackout blinds which are integrated into the window frames. The next morning, sun and billowing clouds have me snapping photos constantly; in the afternoon, a storm in which the building is struck by lightening gives me a ringside seat to a drama only a few other people will have seen.
The Shard, at 309m, is Europe’s new tallest building - although it’s still shorter than the Burj Al Arab and massive 520m short of the Burj Khalifa, it’s still monumental for London. Designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano and built in three years at a cost of $666m, it’s mostly owned and funded by the State of Qatar. Resembling a giant post-modern tree, it’s almost as impressive to look at as it is to look from. From base level on a clear day, the glass-clad pyramidal spire seems to zoom endlessly upwards, like a rocket into space. It was not without controversy, with several architectural and heritage bodies opposed to the development. I haven’t vistied the area properly for several years and had been skeptical, but the fact that the site was previously occupied by a nondescript 1970s office block, its distance from the City (a building of this size would have been too much for such a small area) and the sheer excitement of the design mean I’m won over immediately.
Along with the rebuilding of London Bridge station and a general rise in property prices, the scheme has sparked the smartening-up of the immediate area, including the now trendy Bermondsey Street, which is starting to resemble Shoreditch as a creative hub. There is now an outpost of the White Cube (www.whitecube.com), a London modern art gallery which is now international, and highly-rated restaurants such as Jose and Pizzaro (www.josepizzaro.com), Antico and Zucca, great coffee shops including Bermondsey Street Coffee ("come happy leave edgy"), and the Fashion & Textile Museum (ftmlondon.org).
To explore the area just to the west of the hotel, I’ve enlisted the help of Bryan Gorin, a London black cab driver and Blue Badge Guide. Both qualifications, I discover, equip him, and me, with one of the most informative hours of my life. This is an area I think I know, but Bryan’s mind contains (among other things) The Knowledge, a test by which London cab drivers have to have a mental atlas of London, knowing every street and important landmark, short cut and point of interest.
We start at London Bridge station, at the nondescript bus terminus. “Do you know the meaning of terminus?” Bryan asks. Yes, in one sense it’s Latin for “end”, but, “Terminus was the Roman god of boundaries.” And boundaries are a fitting theme for this area, and building, in so many ways. Southwark, originally a Saxon and Roman settlement, has a 2,000 year history, Bryan explains, and it was important mainly due to the fact the Romans chose the narrowest point across what was then a muddy, marshy river to build the first of many London Bridges in 43CE.
Soon we reach the southern side of the bridge, a place I have been countless times. The bridge we are standing on dates from the 1970s, and is made of concrete and steel, but from Roman times until 1750, Gorin points out, this was the site of the only bridge in the London area and thus one of England’s main travel hubs. Earlier incarnations of London Bridge were much prettier, with grand drawbridges, stone gates and even shops and houses built onto it. “When London was attacked by Viking Danes [in 1014], the then King of England, Ethelred the Unready, and his friend King Olaf of Norway, tore the bridge down to protect the City,” says Gorin, referencing the popular nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down before going into the etymology of Tooley Street, “a corruption of St Olaf...” Further bridges came and went, until 1967, when the 1831 version was sold to an American, who re-erected it in Lake Havasu, Arizona, where it still stands (it’s thought the buyer believed he was purchasing the more impressive Tower Bridge).
Standing in front of the Corporation of London dragon statues, which are painted silver and carry shields bearing the cross of St George, Bryan explains we’re at a crucial boundary, between Southwark and the City of London. “The bridge along with the rest of the City is owned and maintained by the City of London Corporation,” says Gorin, before launching into a fascinating explanation of the dozens of originally medieval guilds (“worshipful companies”) which make up the mostly charitable-status Corporation, which is growing richer by the day thanks to rising land prices. “It is unique in that it is non-political and self-governing, and it has its own police force.” Despite countless trips to and through the City, going to school there and being inspired by it, I hadn’t previously appreciated the immensity of its wealth and influence. While most of the boats bringing goods from across the world docked at warehouses on the south side of the river, taxes were levied from offices on the other side.
Yet it was Southwark’s position outside the City which makes it of equal and complementary interest: here, Gorin explains, activities that were not tolerated in the City, such as widespread drinking, prostitution and theatre-going, thrived; it was also where all the criminals were dealt with (in medieval times, Gorin says, the heads of executed criminals would have been put on spikes, right where we are standing).
Just below the base of the bridge, Gorin takes us down a set of much older steps. “These are Nancy’s steps, from Oliver Twist,” he says. Dickens, along with Chaucer and many other famous writers, focused on this part of London (The Canterbury Tales, it also turns out, were written from Chaucer’s experience as a pilgrim travelling from here by stage coach: a road and river hub for over 700 years, different public houses on Borough High Street were the start and end points for transport across southern England and beyond).
We walk on past the remains of Winchester Palace, the cavernously grand London home of the Bishops of Winchester from 1140 to 1626, people so powerful they had their own court and prison (The Clink, now a museum) on site. Gorin explains that the appointment of a bishop was more political than religious, with the bishops making a lot of money from the rents from brothels; hypocrites that they were, the prostitutes had their own unconsecrated cemetery down the road: unbelievably, part of it is still there.
We finish our tour across the road at Southwark Cathedral and the next-door Borough Market; both have 1,000-year histories. “There has been a market on this site for at least 1,000 years,” says Gorin, “though the first written record of it is from 1276. The Cathedral is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 but the tower is from 1500.” Today the market is thriving, attracting thousands of foodies at the weekend, specialising as it does in “heirloom” vegetables, organic meat, bread and artisanal cheese and supplying many local businesses, including the Shangri-La, with much of their produce.
Over the course of a few days, I try several of the local restaurants, including Applebee's for fish and chips (www.applebeesfish.com) and Feng Sushi (www.fengsushi.co.uk); both are excellent, and good value. From here it's just a 10 minute walk along the river to Shakespeare's Globe and the Tate Modern (www.tate.org.uk), which requires at least two hours to make a visit worthwhile. As I walk back along the river to The Shard, its spire is striking but somehow not oppressive; in a way, it complements its ancient neighbours. Perhaps each era needs its own landmark to look up to: now it's not about bridges, or cathedrals, or castles with gory histories but buildings representing the positive but less tangible elements of their surroundings, in this case the sheer ambition of a global trading city of millions. In its own way this Gulf-owned building is both transcendent and reflective of international boundaries, and if nothing else, this is the reality of London today.
The Shangri-La Hotel, slightly surreally, takes the theme to extremes: I’m met at on the ground floor beside Lang, the hotel’s Chinese-accented tea shop, by Toru Machida, the Japanese head concierge. The director of food and beverage at all the hotel’s Asian-named restaurants (the all day dining restaurant is called Ting, the 52nd-floor bar Gong) is called Nicholas Liang; the head chef, Emil Minev, is Bulgarian. The manager, Jurgen Ammerstorfer, is Austrian, with experience of working in the Middle East and on cruise lines. The company itself, Hong Kong-based and variously incorporated in Bermuda, Malaysia and Thailand, fields, at this property alone, 320 staff from 30 countries.
True, globalisation has, in some senses, led to the watering down of culture and the homogenisation of travel. But here, as a London-born expatriate working in Abu Dhabi, sitting in the 35th floor lounge of this Gulf-built, Asian hotel, I’m reading one of the hotel’s excellent display books, Christopher Winn’s I Never Knew That About London. I’m being served tea by a great young woman with a Cockney accent. I’m learning and seeing something very new in a city of endless opportunity. In one way or another, all over the world, millions have toiled so that we can now sit back and enjoy this view. Dynamic people, international capital and trade in this city made all of this happen, and that’s what makes me, and countless others from all over the world, feel exhileratingly at home.
rbehan@thenational.ae
