LONDON LETTER
I
Dear Editors: The spring in London was warm and sunny.
The bright mornings brought into the shopping streets many young
women in gay dresses, with long skirts and tight waists. They looked
conspicuous, self-conscious, but were undrab and amusing. Nearly every
street has some houses shining with new paint, making the others look
even more crumbling than they did before: but there are workmen
everywhere slowly roofing, plastering, and digging drains. They keep
on steadily between nine and five with no sense of urgency or strain:
they seem to work happily knowing their jobs are secure, and if the
foreman is unpleasant they can always walk out and start with some–
body else. There is an atmosphere of unemphasized personal dignity and
independence. Among the builders large cups of strong tea are drunk
at intervals throughout the day and on the bigger jobs a boy is especially
employed, by the men themselves, to make it. A recent inquiry has
produced the surprising fact that the average public house customer
drinks two pints of beer at midday and six pints every evening.
The Labour Government is proving itself to be well-intentioned and
surprisingly open to suggestion. There was a moment, for example, when
the badly bomb-damaged Nash terraces in Regent's Park were going
to be pulled down, but through the protest of people like
Cyril
Con–
nolly (who wrote letters to the
Times
and held a tea party, for ministry
officials, about it) the lovely shattered
fa~ades
were saved. Now there
are many hundreds of men working away at restoring these beautifully
impressive and elaborate Palladian mansions. I noticed the other day
that the work is being expertly supervised and details like the propor–
tions of the window panes and the proper replastering of the orna–
mental pediments are being taken seriously. Unfortunately most of the
houses, but not all, will never be lived in again: they are to be govern–
ment offices.
It is ironical to have to add that
Horizon
has itself been recently in
great difficulties over finding a new Qffice. Their old one had to be
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