London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough

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London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough

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Buy London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Category: History
Rating: 4/5
Reviewer: John Van der Kiste
Reviewed by John Van der Kiste
Summary: How old London Bridge crossed the Atlantic to a new home in the Arizona Desert
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 277 Date: February 2014
Publisher: Vintage
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9780099565765

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The concept of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art is not new. Yet one of the most unusual sales of this kind occurred in March 1968. It was a time of British economic crisis (where and when have we heard that before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign, and a time when the concept of heritage was unfashionable and the authorities seemed to attach more value to modernity than to relics of the Regency and the Victorian age.

It was also the moment when Robert P McCulloch, entrepreneur and multi-millionaire, who had recently founded the city of Lake Havasu, and one of his closest business associates, decided that the place needed some major landmark to put it on the map. As a result, London Bridge (or rather, old London Bridge) is now in the Arizona Desert.

In 1966 Swinging London was the city which had captured global imagination as the hub of the universe, and was synonymous with a winning World Cup football team, the music revolution spearheaded by the Beatles (admittedly Liverpudlian, but London-based) and others, and the fashions emanating from Carnaby Street. What better moment to raise some extra revenue by putting one or two of its assets on the market? In July 1967, just as the former Cunard-White Star line’s flagship, the Queen Mary, was sold to its new owner in California, it was announced that London Bridge was for sale. More than one would-be purchaser was interested, the first request coming from a seven-year-old schoolboy in British Columbia who had been informed by his mother that it was for sale. Offering to buy some of it, he wrote to the London Corporation, enclosing a $2 note. He was sent a piece and his money back. Within eight months later, the sale was completed. Although details of the bidding process were strictly confidential and the main people involved in the process are long since dead, the world’s largest antique had changed hands.

It was the culmination of several hundred years of history. Elborough writes vividly and entertainingly of the saga from ancient times onwards. There had been a London Bridge at that point over the Thames since Roman times, he tells us, ‘like a dragon jealously guarding its lair, spiky backed with its houses, shops and severed heads on poles’. As the old nursery rhyme used to tell us, ‘London Bridge is falling down’. But every time it did, it was rebuilt better than before, with John Rennie in Georgian England, and after his early death from overwork in 1821 his sons, replacing the 600-year-old medieval structure. The new architectural wonder, hewn out of 10,000 tonnes of Cornish granite, ‘a noble classical granite bridge of five semi-elliptical arches, two of 130 feet, two of 140 feet and a central arch of 152 feet and six inches’, was opened in 1831.

After it was moved bit by bit 3000 miles across the Atlantic and re-erected in its new home, there was a suitable opening ceremony attended by the then Mayor of London and a posse of the great and the good from Arizona, feasting on Louisiana spiced Alaskan king crab and Cornish pasties as they enjoyed the entertainment supplied by Pearly Kings and Queens and street jugglers. It was a happy ending for the time-honoured landmark which might have gone the way of other nineteenth-century buildings in the capital but for its purchaser, and the author likens it to ‘a much passed-over Hollywood star, finally enjoying a second wind as a lead in a TV soap’.

But did McCulloch get the genuine article he originally wanted? Rumours later surfaced that he had originally wanted Tower Bridge. When it was suggested to one of his sidekicks many years later that they had ended up with the wrong bridge, he shrugged it off. ‘Yes, but so what if we did? It still worked.’ Unhappily, by this time the original buyer was no longer around to enjoy his unique acquisition. In 1977, after one of his subsidiary companies was fined $16 million for sharp financial practices, he was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills.

Elborough has a good story to tell, though with his knowledge of cultural references he has a tendency to go off at tangents of mildly dubious relevance. Despite that, as a chronicle of social and architectural history, this is an informative and fun read.

If this book appeals then you might also enjoy:

London: The Illustrated History by Cathy Ross and John Clark

London: The Concise Biography by Peter Ackroyd

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Buy London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
Buy London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough at Amazon.com.

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