the world's greatest cities have stories hidden in plain sight how did a small Roman outpost become the center of the world's largest empire you want to use the one in the center of everything how did this city invent time as we know it the term happy hour and afternoon tea this is the greatest thing that had ever been invented a medieval town burnt to the ground how did it rise from the ashes and survive a blitz of German bars keep calm and carry on it really is a belief system how did steam engines create London's most famous food fish and chips and how did a caffeine addiction create the world's first stock market this is London and you'll never look at it the same way again 10:30 a.m. British Airways flight double o4 from New York is on final approach to London following a course of the winding river town 2,000 years earlier Roman sailed along the same approach and on a bend in the river built a small outpost they called London even today that settlement has grown into a six hundred square mile metropolis of eight million people captain Colin career has piloted this craft safely across the Atlantic Ocean now he and his crew face their greatest challenge landing in London City Airport in the heart of the cat we're landing at London City Airport is challenging landings because they're going to sleep approach because we have to make to avoid the built-up areas of Canary Wharf the runway ahead is only half the length of normal international running passengers taken the view unaware that here there is no margin for error [Music] the notoriously short landing strip is a direct result of London's history turns out this port wasn't originally built for flames it was built for ships if we go back in time 200 years London was the busiest port in the world it's 1815 the height of the British Empire 1/4 of the land on earth is under British rule and the riches of the Empire flow through this port 200 years ago London was the biggest international trading hub in the world I mean this was the center of a huge Empire in the early 1800s almost one-and-a-half million people live in London the biggest city in the world 100,000 Londoners earn their living from the dot every year 60,000 ships that's 165 per day unload over 8 million tons of cargo big ships were coming in with goods from all over the world whether it's spices or goods or textiles just arriving in this one spot I really now make it the city that it is to do the docks are filled with exotic goods from colonies across the British Empire 1/4 the entire globe has within the Empire and all those boats are going back to London on a daily basis right just south of the wharf is a place that defies time or more accurately defines time this is Greenwich home of Greenwich Mean Time that's five hours ahead of Eastern Standard long before smart phones and GPS navigation depended on knowing the time and having a common reference for it in 1884 Britain established Greenwich as ground zero for global time even today it's still the center of time in England was by far the world's dominant sea power it made sense that they got to identify what your home base is in terms of when the clock starts so even today everything operates on Greenwich Mean Time everything else is being in relation to it British sea power declined in the mid 20th century the old docks were abandoned and a new power rose to take its place tall ships were replaced by tall buildings and by the 1980s London had become a center of international finance London now makes more money moving money than anything else and all those international deals are fueled by one thing coffee and not in the way you'd think we think of coffee shops as a perk of modern life but what most people don't know is coffee shops were just as popular in London 300 years ago he was like the crack of the 18th century when people really started realized how awesome coffee is they would sit in these coffee shops and drink like 30 cups a day Coffee was imported to London from Turkey in the 17th century the stimulating effects of caffeine caught on among London businessmen seeking in hedge and coffee shops quickly became the hub of the city's hyper caffeinated financial crowd one man Johnny Castaing takes advantage of this gathering of money men and starts to issue a twice weekly list of stock prices at Jonathan's coffee house fortunes are made and lost selling shares at the coffee shop which in 1773 is renamed the London Stock Exchange now worth three trillion dollars today London has over 1,500 coffee shops and more people drink coffee in London than in New York which is eye-opening since coffee isn't even the caffeinated beverage Londoners are most famous for drinking that of course is tea I'll tell you where the best place to get a cup of tea is it's not like the big department stores and it's not those places there's these little green cabbie Hut's and maybe a hundred years ago there were hundreds of them all over London and this is where London cabbies can finally have a break apart and the little Hut is in the middle of the street only has room for like six seats and you can't sit there if you're not a cabbie you can't sit in those seats that you can walk up to the window and order a cup of tea so that's how I like my tea in London this is the place that cab drivers can go get a cup of tea in our st. the way and there's always other cab drives in there and it's just a place to go have a good Mon really and this is the sort of the rest place Simon is one of London's 20,000 cab drivers and to earn that title is a lot harder than you'd think to an American that's amazement London cabs as the cab drivers know where they're going you never have to tell a London cabbie how to get anywhere nothing thousands of years old and it's not like a grid system or anything like that you have to learn every direction of every single Street and which way they face you may think you're travelling in a straight line but in actual fact when you look on the map you're doing a big sort of curvature shape if you've ever opened up a math book of London your mind will go crazy it looks like spaghetti you have no idea how to get anywhere London is so complicated cabbies have to pass what's considered one of the hardest tests in the world called the knowledge the knowledge genes we have to learn near up every single street road Avenue public building within six miles each watch an cross which is the central London so along the lines of thirty thousand streets and about sixty thousand places of interest we've got tonight GPS what is that they have it right up here and all that knowledge has an unexpected effect a recent scientific study showed a part of London cab drivers brain is larger than the rest of ours the knowledge does affect your brain inside playing at the memory which is called the hippocampus and that part of your brain in old London cab drivers grows and that's not easy for any of us to forget but neither is another consequence of London's medieval city map it's narrow winding streets became the catalyst for a catastrophe in the 1600s packed with wooden housing London was like a tinderbox one spark in the whole city go up in flames London September 2nd 1666 the end of one of the hottest summers on record this is a dirty flag written city of half a million people living in cramped old wooden housing [Music] it's early morning a fire starts in a bakery I'm putting late the close proximity of the building means it spreads quickly catching on drive fast foods and wooden houses in a bid to contain the blaze king charles ii issues of bold order blow up all houses in the fires path to block its advance the barrier stops it from spreading but the fire rages on for five days miraculously only six people died but most of the city lies in smoldering ruins [Music] the King enlists Britain's greatest architect Christopher Wren to rebuild the city Ren sees a blank canvas tear it all down and redesign the city from the ground up he proposes a grid system of boulevards and plazas like those plans for Paris but London's wealthy landowners aren't about to redraw their property models so rain begins rebuilding on the city's original medieval Street plan but instead of wood they use brick and stone a lot of rebuilding went on but the city wasn't as profoundly rethought had as web care but one part of rennes grand plan did achieve fruition st. Paul's Cathedral replacing the original wooden st. Paul's destroyed in the fire its new motto engraved in Latin is reserved I will rise again and rise it did after 35 years of construction st. Paul's enormous dome was second in size only to st. Peter's in Rome until the 1960s it was the tallest building in money and in 1981 it's the only Cathedral large enough for the wedding of Charles and Diana well it's a wonderful shapes and Paul's Cathedral and there's nothing else like it st. Paul's is one of my favorite destinations in London I love the view there too crazy one mile north of st. Paul's is a second marvel of British occupation known as the Cathedral of the railways st. Pancras is among London's busiest train stations a monument to the innovation that turned London into the modern metropolis of today with the arrival of trains in the 1800s raw materials could be transported quickly and efficiently from London to birds many industries outside of the city and throughout Britain instead of days goods arrived in a matter of hours trains turned the entire country into an industrial machine and London was its engine once the largest enclosed space in the world today st. Pancras is an enduring testament to the ingenuity of its designers [Music] station manager J Newton knows every nook and cranny [Music] it's quite an incredible building it really does give you an idea of what they undertook 150 years ago from its roof you get a real sense of the scale of the station incredible absolutely incredible the railways allows the north of England to connect with London and that's what made London what it is today that's what brought the industry the big industry in the industrial revolution from the north the cotton everything else that was happening in the new london down into london it made it available with trains powering an industrial revolution london grew exponentially from 2 million to 4 million in less than 30 years a 25 square mile city became a 100 square mile in trouble I think always were enormously important to London you just have to look at the stations I mean we have mass and Pancras which has been put back to its original glory it's wonderful st. Pancras has recently had a 1 billion dollar renovation the station itself has now become a destination the old ticket office is now a bar [Music] and the st. Pancras hotel has been restored to Victorian perfection now you can wake up in st. Pancras have breakfast and get on a train for money in Paris from some tankers two and a half hours you're into Paris five six hours and you're into Avignon and they're just starting the services down to my face so within six hours you can be in Marseille south of France from the center of London today trains arrived packed to the gills with passengers but 200 years ago they were often weighed down with another time a commodity that would change London forever 1,700 tons a week of North Sea cars once a highly perishable extravagance trains made fish a meal everyone could afford and London's signature food was born fish and chips Sol Rubin is co-owner of the fish-and-chip shop in West London or the railway enable them to bring the fish down from the fishing port in the north down to London to the great 50m south so traditional fishing ports in Scotland and in Whitby and how they transport their space factor a lot quicker councils happening Lindon attack book whether they'll see more booster feeds and a high demand I love the simplicity of it I love the fact that it's just two ingredients it really tastes absolutely and they fill you up and it's a very simple food and I like simple dining I like casual dining and it's a really nice way for a lot of people to have a big meal together without there being any pretense or any necessity for fish and chips is served with mushy peas and drenched in salt and vinegar this is classic London compasses wood away love about fish and chips to things that are fried in being an island fish and chips was the only food that the entirety of the Second World War but was never Russian and that's how God helped save the kingdom during World War two but it was the British fighting spirit that beats him not to blame and London is the image of that resolved [Applause] 1940 German bombs rained down on the British capital to beat the British Hitler wants to pummel them into submission instead of military targets German bombers train their sights on civilians and the City of London but the Fuhrer doesn't account for London's resolve love leaders have incredible spirit and that phrase Keep Calm carry on that's really how they did it keep calm and carry on a mantra of the British in general it's not just a clever phrase to be put on coffee mug it really is a belief system during the Blitz as it became known Prime Minister Winston Churchill saw st. Paul's Cathedral as a symbol of London's defiance a structure that must be protected at all cost but on December 29 it comes under attack from the German air in the first three hours they drop over 120 tons of explosives on one flames engulf the area around st. Paul's and the cathedral dome takes a direct hit firemen and volunteers bravely battled the fire 300 years earlier the original st. Paul's was destroyed in the Great Fire of London the new cathedral was now facing the same fate from the roof of the Daily Mail building photographer Herbert Mason watches the scene nobody can see the cathedral through the smoke and many think it's gone then just as Herbert snaps the picture the smoke clears the dome of st. Paul's is still there one of the great photographs of the Blitz is a picture of st. Paul's with smoke just billowing up from the rest of the city but somehow this beautiful piece of history winds up standing it's a kind of symbol of a British will in the face of Nazi aggression observing the heroism that went into preserving that structure the big part of what allowed the u.s. to get over it like elation ISM and come to Britain's defense in the war 30,000 Londoners died in the Blitz and housing throughout the city was demolished but the Nazis failed to topple one residence you can't miss Buckingham Palace residents at the time of King George - six today 75 years later Buckingham Palace is the home of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second out front of the palace is the famous balcony where the royal family appears on public occasions but this balcony is a recent addition to the palace [Music] built in 1703 for the Duke of Buckingham it was known as Buckingham house and was a modest growing sixty years later it was acquired by the royal family and work began turning it into a palace in 1837 Queen Victoria she designed it still wasn't big enough and made sure there were at least 240 bedrooms to stop people peering into those rooms the Queen pushed for a law that prevented any building in London from being over 80 feet tall one thing I love about London is that the zoning was actually done by order of the Queen so no one could build a building tall enough to look into the palace I think that really tells you a lot about about London and about English value it wasn't until the mid 20th century that the regulations were relaxed in fact it wasn't until 1962 that a building was built that was taller than st. Paul but now London skyline is climbing into the stuff [Music] [Music] seven am chef daniel doherty heads up to work we take the elevator to the 40th floor what a deal Daniel works in the harem tower one of 22 stylish new skyscrapers built in the last 10 years new yorkers give their skyscrapers names like Empire State Building Londoners probably do the same thing right wrong they've got the cheese grater as the guys in the shard and then there's wolf across these we probably give a skyscraper thickness if we have a bit of a teeny penstemon at the top of the Heron tower is the duck and waffle where Daniel is head chef unlike New York which never sleeps London in spite of its copious tea and coffee consumption does and not many of its 8,000 restaurants are open after midnight the duck and waffle is one of the few exceptions you've got a restaurant this bullet three o'clock in the morning come here on a Saturday at three o'clock in the morning it runs and not you know dining that's not drinking is not club it's not a late-night bar it it's a 24-hour restaurant all of the new skyscrapers give London a very 21st century look I have never gone to London and thought oh this is an old city it's always pushing those boundaries and it's doing so with architectures people usually do but it's not doing as an affront to its history it feels more natural and organic but it's just this fascinating city that has both old and new and they work side by side this is the shard the tallest building in Western Europe and one of the newest and it stands right next to one of the oldest landmarks Borough Market my market is brilliant I mean I thought of the other day 21,000 years Borough Market has been in continuous operation since 1014 it's the oldest market in London and a food lover's destination you can pick up abrasive peasants and walk a lot under the age so you can you know grab a fresh juice place brilliant generally I get very very 502 you couldn't see up there borough offers pretty much any type of food you can imagine fire market is famous from all sorts of different foods from all over the world from French cheeses alves and bread to English pies Spanish paella and Asian curries it perfectly reflects the multicultural feel of the city what city in the world has grown more and become more international and changed more in the last 10-15 years than London there seems to be a fantastic balance now with both Anglicans London and immigrant London the ethnic experience there Borough Market is a perfect place to pick up a prime cut of beef the basis of one of London's traditions the Sunday roast originally given to farmworkers hundreds of years ago on Sundays after church bodies it's such a part of British culture the French refer to the Brits as roast beef if you're coming to the London you really need to host it up so that's what we're known for best in England if you come into London yeah you definitely have to have a roast beef dinner try it out see how you like it I really think like roast beef in the idea of the roast dinner is part of our like national identities what come hand-in-hand with tea and crumpets throughout Britain roast beef satisfies the hardiest of appetite but in London its beer that keeps the city's spirits afloat and there's one place where it flows like a river Thames the pub [Music] it doesn't matter where you are in London look around you're always near a pub there are over 7,000 in London town I think that Americans are always stunned how you know every block doesn't just have one it usually has two I do think it goes back to a time where so many people were living in places where entertaining just wasn't an option you needed a public place to see and be seen and you needed a place to leave the work behind it's really a community centre I mean for us it's bar it's not a bar the whole community can come out and read the paper and talk to one another you can bring your dog you can bring the kids I think it's a great just the pub is the lifeblood of London the London pub the pub short for publics house is a British invention so too is happy hour a term coined by William Shakespeare but among this community of drinkers what's on tap next isn't always beer many reach for spirit with a long dubious history gin for centuries Londoners distilled their own gin illegally it was like moonshine with an equally bad reputation and most places that sold it receding rowdy dives but in the 1800s commercial distillation took off and a cleaner smooth June emerged dubbed London Dry Gin this new refined drink appealed to a more sophisticated thicker and lavish gin palaces like the viaduct tavern were built to cater to [Music] today gin is still a popular drink with Londoners and the viaduct speciality cocktail is you guessed it a traditional gin and tonic gin is an amazing drink I've always associated gin and tonic was being very British and even the very London drink I think London is the hybrid part of our history gin and tonic might be distinctly British but it was born in India in the 1800s British soldiers in India drank a quinine tonic to prevent malaria but the taste of quinine is bitter so they mixed the tonic with gym and so the classic G&T was born a small sample of how India changed the taste of London for 300 years India was part of the British Empire the Empire had many colonies around the world like Australia Malaysia and Canada all governed from London but India was the jewel in the crown and that left its mark on London not just with gin and tonic but also curry London is now the world capital of Indian food there are 2,000 Indian restaurants in London more than in Mumbai and Delhi combined what I know what I like on the air so my favourite Indian restaurants world rolls in London but now I mean you're seeing you know starred restaurants that are serving Indian food in London I love a London courage it's one of the things I miss most about not living in London there is Indian food annual but it's not the same at the cinnamon Club chef and owner Vivek Singh is getting ready for the night ahead 29 1 garlic naan currently during the empire thousands of British officials and military personnel would often spend years in India so you know for all these people who had worked and lived a good part of their working life in India when they brought back spices and all those influences that they had become accustomed to it was only natural that Indian food automatically had a foothold in the door I describe it as the romance of the Raj really the first Indian restaurant opened in London two hundred years ago while breakfast on Black Muslim spiced Indian food is now so popular that in a recent poll of British national dishes chicken tikka masala came out on top reading fish and chips chicken tikka masala is it's a national dish of Britain's I do think curry has taken over and you know I'm taking over Britain it also made London is home like you cannot imagine a few years ago today the population of London is made up of 270 nationalities speaking over 300 languages it seems like the whole world connects in London we've always in England been a country where people have come whether it be from Germany or from the West Indies or from Scotland you know the Vikings the Celts we're a great mixture I think we're very lucky with diversity in its DNA London always has and always will look different but one London look remains unchanged a timeless fashion icon that's never out of style the Savile Row hand-tailored suit at the height of the Empire the British government built the houses of parliament from here it ruled over a quarter of the world's population I think you see that sense of empire in the buildings that oftens this was carved you know that British sense of rightness out of language you know that english is the language Parliament is the site of the most famous clock in the world known as Big Ben but Big Ben is really the name of the big bill that tolls on the hour and it's distinct sound actually a mistake two months after it was hung in st. Stephen Stalin one of the hammers cracked the bell it was repaired but the crack remains giving the Bell its distinctive sound [Music] the Bell was cast by the Whitechapel Bell foundry which also made the Liberty Bell which also correct another long-standing legacy of the British Empire is the suit if cities have a man's uniform it's this and it was born in London you know if you just look around you and you see some guy and aware in a suit maybe we would be very surprised to know that that's actually a modified military uniform that's style with the notched collar and the button comes out of the Uniform manufacturing during the Napoleonic war in London 200 years ago saddle row made all Britain's military officer uniforms but then a 19th century visionary asked for a radical alteration strip it of military ornament and fashioned it for everyday use his name was Beau Brummell fashion consultant to royalty confidante to Prince George as is often the case when Prince Regent later to become George the fourth starts wearing this newfangled garment that no one would sit there with keen on as soon as they saw this member of the royal family wearing it the day I got a good get me one of them suits a CAD and The Dandy the old tradition of hand tailoring continues the we chat up in 2008 so you know with the newest guys on the block one on Savile Row a lot of newcomers have been going for a hundred years two hundred years in some cases from measuring it takes ten weeks to make a tailored suit each stage of a Savile Row suit is done by hand taking at least sixty man-hours and most Savile Row tailors only make around three hundred and fifty six years hiding for fifty years nearly fifty oh my grandfather was a tailor and my father and I'm just following any pop-specs you know the Susan is current form hasn't changed you know an enormous amount in the last 150 years the construction methods certainly happened is done the old-fashioned way because it's simply the best way the Savile Row suit is tailored for a man who's always thinking ahead and at 3 p.m. he's probably thinking about this a uniquely British indulgence afternoon tea behind the cloak of tradition hide one of London's most decadent dining experiences cakes scones finger sandwiches piled high on a silver platter Tower this is afternoon tea I went to London the year that I turned 12 and we're staying at some fancy pants hotel I was with my dad and you know you took tea and I thought was the greatest thing in the whole world because there's 12 year-old especially the American 12 year old it wasn't about the gentility of it it was a three-tiered silver treat carrier loaded with little sweets and goodies and then I got to have something with caffeine in it this was the greatest thing that had ever been invented like all great inventions afternoon tea wasn't perfected overnight in fact it was centuries in the making [Music] the first tea came from China to London in the 17th century but the British government taxed it so heavily that only the rich could afford at one point the tea tax was 119 percent [Music] the British government also tax tea sold in the colonies you know the story there was a famous tea party in Boston Harbor all because of the tea ten years after the American Revolution the British government dropped the tax on tea and it quickly became the most popular drink in Britain then in the 1840s a friend of Queen Victoria took tea to new heights I was actually originated from one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting her name was the Duchess of Bedford as she described a sinking feeling that she would get in her stomach around three or four o'clock in the afternoon so she would order some tea and she'd get her servants to sneak up some sandwiches and cakes to her room and it really took off there's a social occasion any woman who says I would like to eat more and therefore create an entire meal that everyone now has to partake in is all right with me for over 150 years Brown's hotel is served afternoon tea following the Royal tradition of overindulgence every afternoon they make 500 pots of tea and over 1,000 sandwiches a team of chefs baked over 500 scones as another puts the finishing touches on a cake you know the idea of sitting and taking that kind of break is a social function that we don't have in America and never really did and I think that's a shame the break for key and the ability to actually converse with other human beings and take that pause during the day I think has a lot of social value but like all good things afternoon tea must pass and Londoners return to the business of building for the future the population is expected to reach 10 million by 2025 so the city is adding to the world's oldest subway the tube [Music] price 20 billion dollars name crossbred all across the city huge new stations are rising out of the ground [Music] this is the new station at Paddington well then here this is the construction of the station itself and what you can see down there is pretty much a platform level so that's where the trying to be coming in 10,000 people are working on 40 construction sites across London oh yeah I do feel breath sinon Crossrail project yeah my father was here for 40 years working on the main station though he spent 30 years on had at the station and in 10 years prior to that it was a black caddy ranking on Paddington Station but then I come along whitcross well and help throw this partner job this machine is named Victoria after Queen Victoria it took eight of these to drill out a 14 mile tunnel under the city the tunnels were created using tunnel boring machines all meters in diameter big teeth on the front and I just know their way through supply of London during drilling they found ancient burial sites of bubonic plague victims and remains of a Roman Road it's the past and the future of London all together in the underground what I love about London is this layering of beautiful ancient architecture and urban layout along with a lot of new technologies that somehow fits alongside things that are four or five hundred years old [Music] London is no longer the center of an empire but it's still the world's number one city destination there's an old saying that if you're tired of London you must be tired of life because London has all that life has defaulted [Music] [Music] you
