Government Building sights in London
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Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey)
Just as fact is often better than fiction, taking in a trial in the ‘Old Bailey’ leaves watching a TV courtroom drama for dust. Of course, it’s too late to see author Jeffrey Archer being found guilty of perjury here, watch the Guildford Four’s convictions being quashed after their wrongful imprisonment for IRA terrorist attacks or view the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe being sent down. However, the Old Bailey is a byword for crime and notoriety. So even if you sit in on a fairly run-of-the-mill trial, simply being in the court where such people as the Kray twins and Oscar Wilde (in an earlier building on this site) once appeared is memorable in itself. Choose from 18 …
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B
Royal Courts of Justice
Where The Strand joins Fleet St, you’ll see the entrance to this gargantuan melange of Gothic spires, pinnacles and burnished Portland stone, designed by aspiring cathedral builder GE Street in 1874. (It took so much out of the architect that he died of a stroke shortly before its completion.) Inside the Great Hall there’s an exhibition of legal costumes, as well as a list of cases to be heard in court that day; if you’re interested in ‘the criminal mind’ and decide to watch, leave your camera behind and expect airportlike security.
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C
Broadcasting House
This is the iconic building from which the BBC began radio broadcasting in 1932, and from where much of its radio output still comes. There’s a shop stocking any number of products relating to BBC programs, even though the majority of the Beeb’s output is produced in the corporation’s glassy complex in Shepherd’s Bush (hop on the website if you want to get tickets to a recording). The vast extension that was under construction at the time of writing is intended to be the new location of the World Service.
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