One of Karl Marx’s close associates, William Liebknecht (1826-1900), was absent from London between 1862 and 1878 (he had returned to his native Germany). On his return, he was astonished at the amount of change to the physical fabric of the capital that had taken place in his 16 years away. Whole streets, buildings and even districts had disappeared as much of the Georgian city was demolished to make new for a metropolis that better expressed mercantile greatness and imperial power.

He wrote: “Was this the city in which I have lived for nearly half a generation and of which I then knew every street, every corner?…What revolutionary changes in the great modern cities. It is a continual uprooting… And a man starting today from a modern great city on a tour of the world will not be able to find his way through a great many quarters. Streets gone, sections disappeared – new streets, new buildings, and the general aspect so changed that in a place where I formerly could have made my way blindfolded, I had to take refuge in a cab in order to get to my near goal.”

Quoted in Marx in London by Asa Briggs and John Callow (2008).