One of my routes takes me from Green Park Underground station to St James's Square. There, after a spell prowling the metal floors of the London Library and perhaps retiring to a leather armchair to digest my researches (it's extraordinary how many people read with closed eyes), I retrace my steps.
Twice on Piccadilly recently, I have been confronted by a blinding light. On Saturday, it was so intense that I had, once more, to close my eyes, nearly blundering into tourists in the Ritz arcade. A Jehovah's Witness might have mistaken it for the Second Coming. You may say it was only the late-afternoon sun, but I've been puzzling about it. I don't remember having observed such an effulgence before.
If I were a Luminist-one of the school of 19th-century American painters who believed the phenomena of Nature were an expression of divine will-I would think it meant something. But what? The streets of London are hardly paved with gold, but a golden light could be taken to symbolise its wealth. Or was it like the beam of light focused by a magnifying glass, a hint that this City of the Plain is about to self-combust? Deep waters.
On a material note, after years of building work, the new Underground station has been revealed: it's much improved.
* Give Country Life for Christmas and save up to 40%
-
The pink granite chateau that the Cointreau family built in the Loire Valley is for sale at £3.5 millionThe great country seats of the Guinness family have an equivalent over the Channel, where the chateau built by the Cointreau family is on the market.
-
Quiz ahoy! Even these gorgeous mice have been waiting for the Country Life Quiz of the Day, November 21, 2025From school reports in South America, it's all in today's Country Life quiz.
