Thankfully, this view is not what I’m writing about, with its jumble of old, recent and dubious…
We are spending a few days with the South London branch of the Tanham family, who are shortly to leave, with granddaughter Alice, for a new life, as, doctors, in Australia. We are staying in a budget hotel on the South Bank of the Thames, and it has been a delight to see how well and organically this ancient part of the city has been preserved and renovated.

A case in point is the recently excavated Winchester Palace.

These ruins are all that remain of the home of the very powerful Bishops of Winchester, among the most influential figures of medieval London. They lie one street behind the Thames, in a densely developed area which beautifully balances leisure, housing, dining and entertaining, using a human scale of construction that maximises the re-use of…