'DEPEND on it, Sir,' the Grand Cham said, 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of sitting in superjams, dodging beggars, avoiding touts, suffering the vulgar sarcasms of acne-splashed policeboys and skating on the squashed mess of vast, ill-disciplined yob-dogs.'

FIVE weeks before the last general election, the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) held a debate on architecture at which representatives of the three principal parties were invited to speak. The Conservative Party failed to put forward a spokesman.

IT IS a long mental leap from Says Court Recreation Ground in Deptford to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, but the origins of Russia's finest city can be traced to this corner of south-east London. Early in his reign, Peter the Great toured western Europe to study the techniques that would enable him to modernise the then-primitive Russian empire. He came to the Thames at the tail end of the 17th century to learn maritime technology. Peter chose to live in Deptford because its craftsmen were accomplished shipbuilders, and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich - at the cutting edge of navigational research - was only a mile away.

THE GILDED interior of St Bride's Church in Fleet Street yesterday provided a perfect stage for the final production to commemorate the decidedly baroque life of Viscountess Rothermere.

IN EARLY 1971, the producers of Crossroads did something unusual. They dramatised the coinage. Viewers of the soap opera watched its characters struggle, in 11 episodes, with the concept of a decimal currency. This was in the run-up to 15 February 1971: Decimalisation Day.

PICTURE St Paul's Cathedral just before the Blitz. Wren's great dome floated serenely above a sea of four and five-storeyed Georgian and Victorian houses, workshops, pubs, shops and cafes leading off Paternoster Row. It was an area alive with the ghosts of London's past. James Boswell watched life spin by from the St Paul's Coffee House, while Doctor Johnson talked of books and politics in the nearby Ivy Lane Club.

The Queen is this afternoon due to reopen the seventeenth- century King's Apartments at Hampton Court Palace which have been restored after being damaged by fire in Easter 1986, writes Debbie Smith.