The Shard

‘I weep for you’, the Walrus said…

Renzo Piano’s The Shard, London Bridge Street, Southwark, SE1

‘I deeply sympathise.’

From Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)

1984

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part…

Victoria Embankment Westminster, WC2N

…but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.

Richard Rogers' Lloyd's Building, Lime Street, City of London, EC3M

Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.

Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's Barbican Estate, Barbican, City of London, EC1A

A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness…

Kohn Pedersen Fox's Heron Tower, Bishopsgate, City of London, EC2N

…a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current…

View of Canary Wharf from Stave Hill Ecological Park, Timber Pond Road, Surrey Quays, Bermondsey, SE16

…turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

Richard Roger's 88 Wood Street, City of London, EC2V

And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

Windsor House, Victoria Street, Victoria, Westminster, SW1

From George Orwell’s 1984 (1948)

Palestra

“All I know is this…

SMC Alsop's Palestra, Blackfriars Road, Southwark, SE1

…nobody’s very big in the first place…

SMC Alsop's Palestra, Blackfriars Road, Southwark, SE1

…and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”

SMC Alsop's Palestra, Blackfriars Road, Southwark, SE1

From Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)