London is really two cities; the City of London, the country’s business centre, often known as the ‘Square Mile’ or ‘The City’ (approximately the area that used to be enclosed by the old Roman walls), and the City of Westminster which, with its environs, makes up the West End and is home to the country’s administration. Westminster also contains shops, parks, palaces, hotels and residential property. Connecting the two is a street called Strand that runs south-west from Chancery Lane, the western border of The City, in a straight line to The Mall – a roadway that extends that line on to Buckingham Palace.

The Celts called it Llon Din (Ship Hill). The Romans called it Londinium and built a massive wall around its 30,000 population. The Saxons followed and the population dropped to 12,000. The Vikings arrived and displaced the Saxons and then the Normans (who were really some other Vikings in disguise) took over in 1066.

King Canute, a pre-Norman Viking who wanted to keep an eye on the powerful London merchants, set up house west of London in 1016, Edward the Confessor completed an Abbey there in 1065 and so Westminster got its name. It became home to the Kings of England for the next 500 years.

By the time of Henry VIII London was already two cities; London where the merchants lived and worked, and Westminster, where the king lived and held court. Strand, running between the two became home to wealthy influential people – lawyers mostly (who else), and it is still the centre for legal business today. Between 1400 and 1630 London grew from 50,000 people to 250,000. Ever more people and housing were packed into its muddy, slimy, smelly, narrow, tortuous streets; it stank, there were plagues. The great fire of 1666 meant London needed rebuilding. Although the architect Sir Christopher Wren wanted to start over, people mostly built on the maze of streets that had been there before so the random pattern was perpetuated; but he built lots of churches.

During the Georgian period the population grew to 1.7 million, the majority living in slums in the East End. The wealthy built fine squares and houses in and around Westminster – what is now the West End. In 1802 John Nash, another great architect, was tasked by the Prince Regent with the huge project of Regent’s Park and Regent Street, which was to include a royal processional route to Buckingham Palace. The processional route included Park Crescent, Oxford Circus, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and The Mall. Although great swathes of buildings were flattened to make way for this project the remainder of London was untouched.

The London metropolitan area grew to about 6 million people in Victorian times and is now around 15 million, but whereas The City of London in 1801 had a population of 124,000, it now houses a mere 5000.

As a result of these steps of unplanned growth, each time with population growing ahead of area, London is neither a rigid pattern like grid-iron New York nor a city of great boulevards designed to provide a clear field of fire like the rebuilt ramrod Paris of Haussman. London, particularly to the east of Regent Street, is random. And this lack of planning makes it both interesting and infuriating to navigate.

Today there are two London mayors. Gavyn Arthur is The Lord Mayor of London, a title that’s been around since 1189, and he is concerned with the well-being of The City of London, whereas Ken Livingston is The Mayor of London, the first to hold this position, and he is concerned with the whole of London. Ken it is who has introduced congestion charging in the capital along with some other traffic schemes, such as closing the north side of Trafalgar Square to traffic that, I must confess despite early scepticism, do seem to have improved traffic flow in the centre of town by reducing the number of vehicles. I wonder how long it will last. So London’s administration and topography continues to change, and I hope it always will.