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Kings Cross Development

No longer living in London I was wholly unaware that Kings Cross had had a total makeover.

I knew the run down area in my youth as my father was Chief Vaccination officer of the Hospital of Tropical Diseases in York Way. I once asked him how he obtained this position to which he replied with typical humility and humour as he was master in this field “All my colleagues were far cleverer than me and went off to research tropical fevers in the jungle … never to return. I never strayed that far from St Pancras.”

A Director of Public Prosecutions and football manager had to deal with scandal when found kerb crawling in the area and it was a place best avoided.

Melanie Gay has reviewed in the Rust The Streets by Anthony Quinn set in Somers Town in Victorian England, a place of slums and crime. No longer.

It now has piazzas like Granary Square with fountains of coloured water, cool restaurants and a exciting living space where my friends live in a converted gasholder, the only problem is that it is so new that my taxi driver could not find it and after the 5th stopping of a local for information and a fare that reached £20 I got fed up with hearing “It’s so new, it’s not on the map …” and bailed out, leaving the cashmere bed socks I bought for my friend’s wife within.

However to see the place was worth it. My friends had a cool duplex and I congratulated them in their mid-sixties for giving up their large residence in Pimlico for a new and vibrant quarter.

We had dinner at the Brasserie at Granary Square which is part of the Ivy chain – every table was taken. I thought that, unlike the Barbican, scabrous industrial units had been converted into an exciting and liveable space very handy for the city and West End.

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About Robert Tickler

A man of financial substance, Robert has a wide range of interests and opinions to match. More Posts