Sujet

Christmas illuminations on Regent Street, West End, looking south to the Quadrant, London , 1970. Creator: Unknown.

Légende

Christmas illuminations on Regent Street, West End, looking south to the Quadrant, London , 1970. There have been Christmas lights on Regent Street in various forms since 1882. The current regular displays date from 1954, prompted by a Daily Telegraph article describing Central London as drab and dull in mid-winter. The Regent Street Association organised and financed the first display and Oxford Street followed suit in 1959. The lights proved so popular that the House of Lords attempted to bring action against the responsible authorities for causing obstruction. Here Christmas shopping is in full swing, the pavements packed with shoppers and the road full of cars, taxis and Routemaster buses. The 1971 display was the last for a few years as, due to recession in the UK, no funding was available from 1972 to 1977 and there were no Regent Street Christmas lights. The displays resumed in 1978 and continue to this day, with a November switching on ceremony headlined by royalty or a celebrity. The themes of the Regent Street Christmas lights are traditionally tastefully elegant in keeping with the ambience of an area of listed buildings and high-end retail.

Crédit

Photo12/Heritage Images/The London Archives (City of London)

Notre référence

HRM25A51_325

Model release

NA

Property release

NA

Licence

Droits gérés

Format disponible

26,8Mo (4,9Mo) / 29,7cm x 22,6cm / 3508 x 2673 (300dpi)

Mots clés

traffic travel transport transportation exterior outdoors city urban London England people busy congestion pedestrians religious shopping bright light night country pedestrian lights dark religion view British bus English display seasonal photography Christianity cityscape festive cheerful illumination darkness Westminster congested location century illuminated taxi cab double decker traffic jam black cab vintage Britain illuminate symmetry photograph christmas decorations concept illuminations photo West End symmetrical United Kingdom time of day B&W tourist attraction archive seventies lit Up road Transport Regent Street omnibus 1970 1970s double-decker routemaster black & white black and white background people B W 20th century tourism City of Westminster TGN christmas outside street photograph landscape Unknown two decker Central London The London Archives LCC Photograph Library