Power & Politics: Crown. Parliament. Power.
The Monarchy and London
Buckingham Palace is the monarch's official London residence. Westminster Abbey has hosted every coronation since 1066. The Tower of London houses the Crown Jewels.
The monarchy plays a ceremonial and constitutional role. Political power sits with Parliament.
Beyond debate, the monarchy remains one of London's most recognised symbols in the world.
Parliament: Commons and Lords
The House of Commons is elected. The House of Lords is appointed.
Both sit in the Palace of Westminster, beside the Thames, which feels appropriate for a city shaped by the river.
The City of London
The Square Mile has its own Lord Mayor, its own police force, and one of the oldest continuous local authorities in the world.
Fragments of the original Roman wall still stand today, tucked between office buildings.
The streets you walk through today follow the same ground as Roman Londinium.
Henry VIII and the Church of England
Henry wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon. The Pope refused. Henry removed the Pope's authority over England entirely.
In 1534, the Act of Supremacy declared Henry the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Between 1536 and 1540, over 800 religious houses were closed, their land seized.
It began with a divorce. It ended with a new church and a country changed permanently.
Westminster Abbey still stands. So does the Church of England.
The British Empire and the Commonwealth
At its peak in 1920, the British Empire covered 35.5 million square kilometres and governed 412 million people, roughly 23% of the world's population. The largest empire in history.
The Empire brought language, law and infrastructure. It also brought conquest, the slave trade, and the extraction of enormous wealth. Both things are true.
What remained became the Commonwealth: 56 independent countries, 2.7 billion people.
When you walk through Brixton, Tooting, Hackney, Southall, you are walking through the Commonwealth. It came here. It stayed. It shaped the city.
Council Housing
Walk through almost any London neighbourhood and you will see it. Blocks of flats with uniform windows. Brick estates set back from the road.
In 1979, 42% of Britons lived in council homes. By 2016, only 8%.
Estates were built across London, in wealthy boroughs and less wealthy ones alike, which is why you find council blocks in Kensington and Chelsea, not just in Tower Hamlets.
Next time you walk past an estate, whatever the neighbourhood, you are looking at one of the most ambitious social experiments in British history.
Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady
Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female Prime Minister in 1979. She served for eleven years, longer than any PM of the twentieth century.
The nickname came from a Soviet Army newspaper. She embraced it immediately.
Her Right to Buy scheme gave council tenants the right to buy their homes at a discount. By 1987, over one million homes had been sold.
The Iron Lady's London is still the London you walk through today.
Winston Churchill
When Britain stood almost alone against Nazi Germany in 1940, it was Churchill's words that held the country together.
He refused to consider surrender when pressure to negotiate with Hitler was at its most intense. The Blitz killed over 30,000 Londoners.
His statue stands in Parliament Square, facing the Houses of Parliament he spent a lifetime serving.
"We shall fight on the beaches... we shall never surrender."
Queen Elizabeth II
Born in Mayfair in 1926. The Royal Family refused to leave London during the Blitz.
When Buckingham Palace was bombed, her mother said:
"I am glad we have been bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye."
On VE Day she slipped out of Buckingham Palace and joined the celebrating crowds, anonymous among the people she would one day serve as Queen.
She reigned for seventy years, the longest in British history.
Her monument is everywhere you look.