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This post isn't about things that happened. It's about things that didn't.
According to The Whole Equation, Liz Taylor nearly died during the first attempt to film Cleopatra. Now, if that had happened we'd still have the exact same prints we do here of Suddenly Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and National Velvet. But how different would they look to us if, rather than seeing someone who survived to become a bit of a joke, hindsight meant we saw Liz haunted by the same lurking doom as Marilyn is in all her films?
Thinking about the other worlds because Channel 4's trailer for their political awards is slash, but also because I've started on Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde's London As It Might Have Been, a collection of architectural sketches, doomed proposals and visionary maps. It has its flaws - the 1995 preface to the 1982 text states "a giant Ferris Wheel envisaged for Jubilee Gardens on the south bank has never materialised", and is sceptical of "A new Tate gallery in the disused power station on Bankside". Even as pure history, it's good - I never knew that old Saint Paul's was sans tower from a lightning strike in Elizabeth's reign, long before the Great Fire finished it off. But as a hypothetical history, and a psychogeography...the most remarkable thing is how horrifying most of the proposals are. So many times we narrowly escaped becoming another [spit] Paris! So many monstrosities were nearly extruded, from a pyramid in Trafalgar Square to bridges and palaces which even I would consider 'a bit much'. But London's immune system was too much for them. They simply Did Not Belong, and as such, could never happen.
This is not simply because one's used to this London. There are a few ideas which could have worked - I can imagine Nelson stood at the base of his column, as though with his back to the mast. Wren's Great Design for Saint Paul's is more different to ours than it first seems, but you could walk past it a few times without noticing you'd slipped through. And just imagine if Wembley had had one of the Eiffel-beating towers of Babel that were proposed, rather than a sodding stadium! Or we'd had the Metropolis-style Liverpool Street with a helipad on the roof!
There was room for variation here and there, but the most powerful sensation one gleans is that true buildings were always there, waiting to be built. London is eternal. It's just taking some time to realise itself.
I've also been reading a set of essays by military historians caled What If?, which makes for even more terrifying reason. Apparently the French asked the US for "two or three" A-bombs in 1954, for use in conenction with the siege of Dien Bien Phu. Imagine if we'd had WWIII before we even had pop music. Of course, some of the earlier turning points (the collapse of the Mongol invasions) could have gone even more badly. There is an occasional tendency to favour our world over those which might have been - I think they're really clutching at straws when they look for the upside of Rome not falling, of my namesake's early demise or of the Frankish defeat of the Moors. But nonetheless, for all that I scorn this parallel for its physical laws, within those laws, we could have done so much worse.
And all this means that today, out of the corner of my eyes I can see some of London's temples and spires and minarets that never were.
Thinking about the other worlds because Channel 4's trailer for their political awards is slash, but also because I've started on Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde's London As It Might Have Been, a collection of architectural sketches, doomed proposals and visionary maps. It has its flaws - the 1995 preface to the 1982 text states "a giant Ferris Wheel envisaged for Jubilee Gardens on the south bank has never materialised", and is sceptical of "A new Tate gallery in the disused power station on Bankside". Even as pure history, it's good - I never knew that old Saint Paul's was sans tower from a lightning strike in Elizabeth's reign, long before the Great Fire finished it off. But as a hypothetical history, and a psychogeography...the most remarkable thing is how horrifying most of the proposals are. So many times we narrowly escaped becoming another [spit] Paris! So many monstrosities were nearly extruded, from a pyramid in Trafalgar Square to bridges and palaces which even I would consider 'a bit much'. But London's immune system was too much for them. They simply Did Not Belong, and as such, could never happen.
This is not simply because one's used to this London. There are a few ideas which could have worked - I can imagine Nelson stood at the base of his column, as though with his back to the mast. Wren's Great Design for Saint Paul's is more different to ours than it first seems, but you could walk past it a few times without noticing you'd slipped through. And just imagine if Wembley had had one of the Eiffel-beating towers of Babel that were proposed, rather than a sodding stadium! Or we'd had the Metropolis-style Liverpool Street with a helipad on the roof!
There was room for variation here and there, but the most powerful sensation one gleans is that true buildings were always there, waiting to be built. London is eternal. It's just taking some time to realise itself.
I've also been reading a set of essays by military historians caled What If?, which makes for even more terrifying reason. Apparently the French asked the US for "two or three" A-bombs in 1954, for use in conenction with the siege of Dien Bien Phu. Imagine if we'd had WWIII before we even had pop music. Of course, some of the earlier turning points (the collapse of the Mongol invasions) could have gone even more badly. There is an occasional tendency to favour our world over those which might have been - I think they're really clutching at straws when they look for the upside of Rome not falling, of my namesake's early demise or of the Frankish defeat of the Moors. But nonetheless, for all that I scorn this parallel for its physical laws, within those laws, we could have done so much worse.
And all this means that today, out of the corner of my eyes I can see some of London's temples and spires and minarets that never were.
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But yes, I see you point.