| [00:01.420] |
At the end of the 18th century, |
| [00:03.620] |
poet and visionary William Blake, |
| [00:06.080] |
prophesied a city where awfulness and wonder become the same thing. |
| [00:12.110] |
Industrialisation, the machine age and the railways |
| [00:16.020] |
would transform the look and the experience of the city. |
| [00:21.500] |
No more the beautiful neo-classical Georgian city, |
| [00:25.110] |
London was to become a huge sprawling metropolis. |
| [00:29.350] |
1 million inhabitants in 1800 |
| [00:32.280] |
would become six and a half million a century later. |
| [00:36.100] |
Now the truest pictures of London |
| [00:38.940] |
would find beauty and inspiration in the most horrific qualities of the city. |
| [01:03.180] |
This immense view of the sprawling metropolis |
| [01:06.030] |
was billed as an illusionistic scene designed to thrill and excite. |
