Southwark

Southwark has been where London goes to misbehave since the Romans put a bridge across to it, and for the next fifteen centuries or so the City sent its playhouses, bear pits and brothels over the water, where the Bishop of Winchester licensed the lot and kept a prison for anyone who overdid it. The bears have gone and the Globe has been rebuilt for coach parties. The arrangement still holds, though, because the rest of the capital crosses the river to eat, drink and lose a phone, then crosses back to sleep. The people who live here do it in flats wedged between a cathedral and a railway viaduct, and stopped noticing either one years ago.