Table of Contents
Introduction 8
Myths for visitors 10
London is a city forever shrouded in fog 12
It's always raining in London 15
The River Thames is filthy 17
The River Thames is the cleanest major river in Europe 18
London is a crime-ridden city where you're likely to get mugged by an Artful Dodger type 20
All Londoners speak like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, filling their phrases with cockney rhyming slang 22
The measure of the city 24
London is the greatest city on Earth 26
The M25 is an orbital motorway that encircles London 28
London is the capital of the United Kingdom 30
You have to have a London postcode to live in London 31
London ends, and the North begins, at the Watford Gap 32
The centre of London is at Charing Cross 34
A true cockney must be born within the sound of Bow bells 37
The City of London is a square mile 39
Historical bloopers 42
Boudicca is buried beneath Platform 10 at King's Cross 44
The arms of the City of London contain the sword of William Walworth 46
The Great Fire of London was the greatest of all London's fires 48
The Great Fire of London wiped out the Great Plague 50
When the ravens leave the Tower of London, the kingdom shall fall 52
In ancient times, the Tower of London was regularly used to execute traitors 55
St was impossible to break out of the Tower of London's prison cells 58
Shakespeare's Globe is an accurate recreation of the original Globe 61
Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe not to bomb Senate House, because he wanted to use it for a headquarters following an invasion of Britain 62
Before the 1950s, London was very white and very English 64
Landmark lies 68
The tower popularly called 'Big Ben' should actually be called 'St Stephen's Tower' - Big Ben is the bell! 70
It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament 72
The statue on top of the Old Bailey is blindfolded to indicate that justice is blind 74
A model of Napoleon's nose can be found under one of the portals of Admiralty Arch. Soldiers tweak it for luck every time they pass through 75
If the Union flag is flying on Buckingham Palace, it means that the monarch is at home 77
Old London Bridge was sold to a gullible American who thought he was buying Tower Bridge 79
The Shard is the tallest building in Europe 81
Counterfeit buildings 82
A statue of Eros stands in Piccadilly Circus 84
Green Park contains no flowers, on the order of Queen Catherine of Braganza 86
The prime meridian passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich 88
The BT Tower has no stairs, and is the only building in Britain that may evacuate using lifts in an emergency 90
Famous Londoners 92
Dick Whittington was a lowly farmer's boy who became Lord Mayor of London three times, with help from his cat 94
Guy Fawkes was executed for masterminding the Gunpowder Plot 96
Dick Turpin was a dashing highwayman who rode from London to York in one day 98
Sweeney Todd was the demon barber of Fleet Street 101
Jack the Ripper stalked the fog-veiled streets of Whitechapel dressed in top hat and cloak 103
Boris Johnson is the Lord Mayor of London 107
Subterranean London 108
Buckingham Palace has its own private Tube station 110
The basement of the Viaduct Tavern on Newgate Street contains old cells from Newgate Prison 111
Scientific analysis of London Underground carriage seats found traces of vomit, semen and human faeces 113
Always remember to touch in and touch out 116
London language 118
Elephant and Castle is named after La Infanta de Castilla 120
We need to protect London's traditional place names, like Fitzrovia 122
Are you pronouncing it wrongly? 124
Spelling and punctuation 126
That's not my name 128
The phrase 'on the wagon' has its origins in London executions 131
The phrase 'at sixes and sevens' was invented by London livery companies in a dispute over precedence 133
Nylon was discovered by teams working in New York and London, hence it was called NYLon 135
A miscellany of misnomers and false etymologies 136
Popular culture 140
Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying 'Elementary, my dear Watson' 142
The 'swinging sixties' were a time of free love, hedonism and high fashion for Londoners 143
Jimi Hendrix released a pair of parakeets from his Carnaby Street flat in the 1960s: now there are thousands of them 145
Aphex Twin lives in the strange glass and metal structure on the Elephant and Castle roundabout 147
Bob Holness played the saxophone solo on 'Baker Street' 148
Mama Cass choked to death on a ham sandwich in London 149
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards founded the Rolling Stones after randomly meeting on Dartford station 150
Plaques that got it wrong 152
Wrong bomb 154
Other mistaken locations 155
Motor mayhem 156
Dickemian duncery 157
Official typos 158
Deliberate typos 159
Bankside oddness 160
The apologetic plaque 161
And now for something completely different 162
Tourist-trap trivia 164
You're never more than six feet away from a rat 166
Savoy Court is the only place in London where you must drive on the right 167
A little-known Roman bathhouse can be found near the Strand 170
An old street lamp on Carting Lane is powered entirely by the fumes from sewers 172
Black cab drivers must carry a bale of hay everywhere they go 174
London's equestrian statues conform to a hidden code 175
There are no roads in the City of London 177
Ely Place is technically in Cambridgeshire and you can't be arrested there 178
The motif on Westminster's lamp posts is a memorial to Coco Chanel 180
Trafalgar Square contains the world's smallest police station 181
Marble Arch contains London's smallest police station 183
Jeremy Bentham, the founder of University College London, still presides over council meetings, despite having died in 1832 185
London tour guides are full of rubbish 187
Let's start a new wave of false facts 188
Bibliography 190
Index 192
