By 200 AD, despite the burning of the areas around Lombard and Gracechurch streets in the conflict between Boadicea's Iceni tribe and the occupying Romans, it had become a walled city of 50,000. And 200 years later, following Roman withdrawal, it was to revert back to a farming community and await King Canute and the tide of progress.

The Thames was London's first highway, bringing the trade and commerce that established the City of London and, 1,000 years later, its twin centre and Royal Court of Westminster, founded on an abbey church by Edward the Confessor in 1050.

Later came the big disasters: The Black Death of 1348 in Chaucer's time that halved the population; The Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in I666 when Samuel Pepys chronicled the sight of St Paul's burning. Then came the First World War, and the Second World War Blitz in 1941 when Churchill cat-napped and stirred the nation from a bunker in Whitehall.

In between came Elizabeth I Golden Age of Renaissance, with Shakespeare the rage and Drake's Ships repelling the Spanish Armada, the discovery of the Americas and the growth of the Commonwealth. The population explosion and gin palaces of the 1700's; Dickens's London and the Industrial revolution; The Victorians and the Empire; the media explosion and the Swinging 60s.

London's past provides the backdrop to a city steeped in history. From the magnificent monuments and buildings of the West End and the City to the back streets and alleys of the East End, the ghosts of the great and the small, the famous and infamous still linger in London's memory. With a little imagination, a journey through London streets can transport you like a traveler in time.

Despite the changing speed and inroads of modern life, and a now permanent homeless population, London still has a rare style and timeless quality: the Changing of the Guards, Big Ben, the Bobbies on the beat, the big red London Buses, black Hackney Cabs and more.