London has always attracted tourists and tourists take photographs. Colour photography was expensive and after World War 2 almost exclusively the preserve of the American visitor. Most of these images have made their way back across the pond and are seen here for the first time in public. London is seen in all its 1950's grimy splendour before the skyline changed forever. London has changed over the past sixty or so years and is not the city it was. Perhaps it was better then, perhaps not. Only through the medium of photography can we go back and be eternally grateful to the tourists that DID take these images and allow us to travel back to a world long gone.
Fleet Street in 1952, drab in the Post-War austerity Britain that would be enlivened by the Coronation the following year
Harrods is seen here in the 1950's prior to the stonework being cleaned. There really IS a red sandstone building under the grime!
