The Waste Land by Thomas Stearns Eliot (T. S. Eliot), who came from the United States but lived in England, is often called the greatest poem of the twentieth century. Its 433 lines depict the London of 1923 in the fragmented form of an abstract painting. Scenes appear like shapes without title or outline. To celebrate the centenary of the poem, I have devised a walk through The City connecting locations mentioned by Eliot. The Waste Land was published as a single entity by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press as Eliot was associated with the artistic intellectuals of The Bloomsbury Group.

Blue Badge Tourist Guides on a tour of London will probably go through Trafalgar Square in the centre of the city. One of its most striking features is the sculpture on display on the northwest side of the Square. Known simply as ‘The Fourth Plinth,’ it remained empty until 1999. It was consistently rumoured that a statue of the late Queen Elizabeth II was planned for this space but she had a very long life and died at the age of 96 in 2022.