Rivers of Time

Abstract

The face of London is changing. The banks of the Thames are being redeveloped. Soon the Globe Theatre will resume its activities as in Shakespeare’s time. One literary age expels another. The London that is passing away is that of Dickens. Twenty years ago it was still possible to glimpse the world of Fagin and Bill Sykes, and to visualise Pip in Great Expectations as he tried to spirit the convict Magwitch to the continent, sneaking through the huge, forbidding barges, and taking advantage of the tide. When I first used to visit London in the early 1960s, one could still stroll down the Embankment and smell the scents of cinnamon and pepper floating down from the pulley-equipped lofts of the East or West India Docks. This was the exotic London, with its pungent colonial flavour, that inspired French poets such as Pierre Mac Orlan (a Picard in spite of his Irish name) who wrote evocatively of Limehouse Causeway. London had the advantage over Paris, for it was a colossal harbour directly linked to the whole world.