The Metropolis and its Image

Constructing Identities for London, c. 1750-1950

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by Dana Arnold

Blackwell Publishers

Due/Published February 2000, 176 pages, paper

ISBN 0631216677

This book examines key moments in the emergence of London as a metropolis and considers different ways in which its image has been formulated and presented. The complexity of the different identities of London are revealed in the tensions and interactions between manifestations of civic and national pride, the relationship between private and governmental institutions and urban planning issues. The chapters address a range of topics from specific questions of architectural style to the relationship between the City of London and London as a metropolis. Different methods of constructing urban identities are explored, including representations of London in the visual arts, the self-conscious work of architects and planners, and approaches adopted by historians to give the city different meanings and identities.

Contents:

1. The View from the Hill: Alternative Aspects and Rural Presences in Mid-Eighteenth Century London: Elizabeth McKellar (Birkbeck College, University of London).
2. Aestheticizing the Accidental City: Antiquarianism, Modernity and the Representation of Late Eighteenth-Century London: Lucy Peltz (The Museum of London).
3. The City as a Site of Cruelty: The Treatment of Animals and the Image of London 1800-1840: Diana Donald (Manchester Metropolitan University).
4. London Bridge and its Symbolic Identity in the Regency Metropolis: The Dialectic of Civic and National Pride: Dana Arnold (University of Southampton).
5. Ministers and the Metropolitan Image: Cabinet, Parliament and the Concept of a Capital City c.1850-1910: Michael Port (Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London).
6. Rebuilding the Heart of the Empire: Financial Headquarters in the City of London 1919-1939: Iain Black (King's College, London).
7. Benjamin's Paris? Freud's Rome? Whose London? Imaging London after World War II: Adrian Rifkin (University of Leeds).
8. Consuming the City: The Millennium Dome and the Image of London: Neil Leech (University of Nottingham)