"THE FIRST date in English history is 55BC." So opens that model of scholarship, 1066 and All That. And so, give or take some rough verbiage, opens This Sceptr'd Isle (R4), a series that will fill the sacred 15 minutes after the Morning Service throughout the next year, offering us Memorable Dates and Bad Things aplenty. The rounded, nay spherical, tones of Anna Massey give spurious orotundity to Christopher Lee's bumpy script, filled out, so far, with solemn readings from Winston Churchill and extracts from a remarkably bad translation of Tacitus.

The river still provides new sights and hidden surprises, says Michael Leapman, even for a Londoner. Just take a walk on the south side

Buffeted and battered by one wind tunnel too many

this springtime walk on the northern edge of London takes in two splendid gardens and gives a surprising view of a famous City landmark, designed by Sir Christopher Wren but now festering in the countryside.

An enormous - and hugely expensive - hoarding has run afoul of the Corporation of London. But Amanda Baillieu says that it's w ell worth seeing - while you can

Nicholas Schoon reviews a plan for Greenwich to be turned into `a new Versailles'

The talk along the Greenwich waterfront is of change. Over a lunchtime pint in the Anchor and Hope looking out at the wooden jetties at low tide, locals ponder how life in the south London borough once was and how it might be in the future.

Jonathan Glancey welcomes the hi-tech changes at an architectural and u rban archive

Drop into St Paul's for Evensong? You can combine the pleasures of Christopher Wren's masterpiece with Britain's largest choir. The beauty of Cranmer's and Coverdale's 16th century prayers and the glorious music make for a heady experience. The service starts at 5pm weekdays (3.15pm Sundays), but get there early if you want to sit in Grinling Gibbons' carved oak and limewood choir stalls. The choir has over 50 members, of whom 38 are boys.

Billingsgate fish market has long moved from the City to the Isle of Dogs, but the annual 'Harvest of the Sea' service is still held at the Church of St Mary-at-Hill in Lovat Lane, close to the old market building. This year it is on 9 October at 11am. The church is decorated with platters of fresh fish arranged in wondrous patterns - well worth a look even if you are not attending the service.

One Wren church in the City no longer contains pews, pulpit or an altar. Instead their place has been taken by benches, grass and a fountain. Rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, which began just around the corner in Pudding Lane, St Dunstan's in the East was one of Wren's Gothic creations.

Richard Dillon Lott Du Cann, lawyer: born London 27 January 1929; called to the Bar, Gray's Inn 1953, Bencher 1980; Treasury Counsel, Inner London QS 1966-70; Treasury Counsel, Central Criminal Court 1970-75; QC 1975; Chairman, Criminal Bar Association 1977-80; Chairman, Bar of England and Wales 1980-81; Recorder of the Crown Court 1982-94; married 1955 Marley Sawtell (two sons, two daughters); died London 4 August 1994.

SAVE Britain's Heritage has challenged the findings of the Templeman Commission on City of London churches, which recommended that 24 should be closed, including 18 by Sir Christopher Wren. A Save report, 'City churches have a future', says that many of those threatened could be kept open with non-stipendiary clergy.

THE CONSTRUCTION of the British Library has become the stuff of legend. Will it ever open? Why has it taken so very long? After all, there is plenty of evidence to show that big, complicated buildings can be completed at a hell of a lick. The Empire State Building was raised within a year, Crystal Palace in weeks. Albert Speer completed Hitler's vainglorious Reich Chancellory down to the last veneered and Versailles-like detail in just 10 months, using labour drawn from all over Germany.