London a La Mode [antikvár]

PrefaceMy London is a complex jungle of nine million souls hell-bent on the good things of life. An empire has been and gone, and the offices of departed power dot the West End like carcases in a pasture of skyscrapers. To the East, the great warehouses line a Thames blackened with bygone filth. Once they were filled with gold and silks from India, sugar from the West Indies, timber and tobacco from North America. Now, they are stuffed with detergents and pet-foods, and other necessities of a thriving consumer economy.The idle and the industrious are with us as the industriously idle and the idly industrious. It is sometimes difficult to tell which is which. There are so many more of us now. Leisure from automation has created a boredom which for so many of us can only be dispelled by the constant pursuit of pleasure. And why not? So, London of the 1960s has revived for all, and in good measure, the riotous gaiety and pungent contrasts of the 1760s. Only more so. Not only do we have good food, stylish clothes, vice and gambling but our very own pop, striptease for everyman and organized crime.How can any artist interested in his time ignore such subject matter? The unbridled vitality of the days and nights of our capital city is the envy of the civilized world. It is a paradise for our questing pencils!H-