Ink and Drink

Sir Philip Gibbs called it “The Street of Adventure.” Corny. but not false, for Fleet Street and its immediate neighborhood contain the highest concentration of newspapers in the world. Fleet Street is to journalism what Harley Street is to medicine. It was from this district that the Daily Telegraph sent Stanley to discover Livingstone and The Times sent Russell to shake a government by his exposure of incompetence in the Crimean War. A young journalist from the Street, afterward famous, reported the first flight of the Wright brothers in a handful of words, not wanting to use too much expensive cable space on a stunt that lasted only a few seconds. Nearly every journalist in Britain nurses a secret hope of making it to the Street.

It is quite a short street, running from the Strand to Ludgate Circus. It is almost entirely devoted to ink. From the Daily Telegraph and the Express, to the Catholic Herald, the Methodist Recorder, the London offices of all the big provincial papers, to the Protestant Truth Society which offers Maria Monk and “Convent Life Unveiled,” to Reuters and the Press Association, nearly every building serves the printed word. Even the statuary does the same. Outside St. Bride’s, the ancient church of journalists, there are statues of Heminge and Condell, the men who published the First Folio, and at Ludgate Circus there is a bust of that later master, Edgar Wallace.

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Colm Brogan

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Sir Philip Gibbs called it “The Street of Adventure.” Corny. but not false, for Fleet Street and its immediate neighborhood contain the highest concentration of newspapers in the world. Fleet Street is to journalism what Harley Street is to medicine. It was from this district that the Daily Telegraph sent Stanley to discover Livingstone and The Times sent Russell to shake a government by his exposure of incompetence in the Crimean War. A young journalist from the Street, afterward famous, reported the first flight of the Wright brothers in a handful of words, not wanting to use too much expensive cable space on a stunt that lasted only a few seconds. Nearly every journalist in Britain nurses a secret hope of making it to the Street.

It is quite a short street, running from the Strand to Ludgate Circus. It is almost entirely devoted to ink. From the Daily Telegraph and the Express, to the Catholic Herald, the Methodist Recorder, the London offices of all the big provincial papers, to the Protestant Truth Society which offers Maria Monk and “Convent Life Unveiled,” to Reuters and the Press Association, nearly every building serves the printed word. Even the statuary does the same. Outside St. Bride’s, the ancient church of journalists, there are statues of Heminge and Condell, the men who published the First Folio, and at Ludgate Circus there is a bust of that later master, Edgar Wallace.