Sunday 13 April 2008 10:45pm - 11:45pm

From Westminster Bridge, the location for Wordsworth’s celebration of dawn, Melvyn Bragg travels downriver by boat, and up to the West End on a double-decker bus, by way of St. James, before delving into the dark world of London’s 19th century child sweatshops.

He then arrives on the South Bank, and the home of foul-mouthed Thames boatmen and the street slang of Shakespeare’s day.

Crossing a city of fog, fire and filth, we hear why the Victorians feared to tread the streets of the East End. The river played a dark role in this part of London. Outside the old city limits, the Thames passes through Wapping which was for centuries a lawless outpost for low-lifes (now home to journalists) before heading on to Joseph Conrad’s Gravesend and the ghosts of Britain’s seafaring tradition.

“It was impossible to tell where the monster city began or ended, for the buildings stretched not only to the horizon on either side, but far away into the distance, where, owing to [the coming shades of evening and] the smoke, there was no distinguishing earth from heaven. The multitude of roofs was like a dingy red sea, heaving in bricken billows, and the seeming waves rising up one after the other till the eye grew wearied with following them. ………”
Henry Mayhew took a hot air balloon – Illustrated London News, 1852

“This Thames was a dark tide of horror; that sodden algae-matted gate, leading to the fastness of the Tower, the thud of the axe, the tide lapping Wapping Old Stairs where pirates were taken and tied to the piles at low tide until three tides had flowed over them; the stinking hulks lying off Gravesend with their fettered human cargo.”
P.D.James – Original Sin, 1994

Contributors include: Stephen Fry, Boris Johnson, Tracey Emin, Martin Amis, PD James, Peter Ackroyd, Ian Hislop, Peter Bazalgette (reads his great grandfather’s Leader in the Builder 1875), Monica Ali, Ken Livingstone.

Melvyn Bragg’s London journey: Westminster - Charing Cross - St James - Piccadilly Circus - The Strand - Waterloo Bridge - South Bank - London Bridge - The City - Tower Bridge - The City - The East End - Brick Lane – Wapping - Canary Wharf - Thames Barrier – Gravesend.