The london underground

In the centre of London’s Paternoster Square there is a tall column on a heavy octagonal base that provides a few seats and shelter from the winds whipping around St Paul’s. If you look closely, you see a mishmash of styles, with the Corinthian column topped by a gold-covered flaming urn and various baroque flourishes. Passers- by might be surprised to find such an ode to eclecticism amid the rather modern neoclassicism of what was a highly controversial development in 2008 that attracted the attention of the then Prince of Wales. What few of them will know is that the column is not just a decorative addition to a dull

In the 1920s the linocut broke out of the schoolroom and on to gallery walls. Here was a democratic new art form, perfect for the times with its lowly materials — a piece of old linoleum flooring for the block, while the best tools, according to the artist Claude Flight, were an old umbrella spoke for cutting and a toothbrush to rub the back of the paper. The finished prints, Flight hoped, would be cheap enough for working-class pockets. Above all, the bright, dynamic images themselves, often depicting scenes of contemporary life — busy streets, the London Underground, skating, the first motor races — captured the mood of the age.