The City of London, Real and Unreal

Abstract

2004, actually, and Lord Mayor standing in shadow of St. Paul's, throngs of Londoners in front of him and behind him looming that leaden-headed old obstruction, Temple Bar. The Lord Mayor speaks, people applaud, and large wooden doors open, uniting crowds on either side of gateway, who mingle with each other, with aldermen, and with reporters, all celebrating return of Christopher Wren's Portland stone arch to City of London. It is capstone on City's major commercial development project, revamped Paternoster Square. Temple Bar no longer bars anything; it serves simply as an aesthetic attraction for nearby office workers and as a pleasing passageway through which shoppers can visit Marks & Spencer Simply Food, Vidal Sassoon, Boots, or Starbucks. There is no fog anywhere. To scholars of Victorian Britain, Temple Bar is instantly recognizable; images of it abounded in nineteenth century, and, as Lynda Nead has shown, it was not merely a symbol of London but the pivot around which London moved (203). With its central carriage gate and flanking pedestrian posterns, and its statues of early Stuarts, Temple Bar stood as boundary between Westminster and quasi-independent City of London: monarchs customarily waited at its gates to be met by Lord Mayor before entering City. By