City of Destruction

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

We see no white-winged angels now.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

From George Eliot’s Silas Marmer (1861)

Fearing Their Symbols

Razed the garden, profaned the chalices and the altars…

Trellick Tower, Golborne Road, Kensington & Chelsea, W10

…by horse the Huns broke into the Monastic library and they tore the incomprehensible books and they vituperated them and they burnt them…

Windmill Lane, Dublin, Dublin 2

…fearing their symbols and characters might be concealing secret blasphemies against their God…

Leake Street, Waterloo, Lambeth, SE1

…who was an iron scimitar.

Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

From Jorge Luis Borges’ The Theologians (1947)

Lowest of the Low

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low.

Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, E1

All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.

Highgate Hill, Archway, Islington, N19

That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.

Seville Place, Dublin, Dublin 1

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

Caroline Street, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, E1

I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners.

Long Street, Shoreditch, Hackney, E2

And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Dock Road, Brentford, TW8

Vincent van Gogh’s Letter to Theo (1882)