At the end of the 18th century,
poet and visionary William Blake,
prophesied a city where awfulness and wonder become the same thing.
Industrialisation, the machine age and the railways
would transform the look and the experience of the city.
No more the beautiful neo-classical Georgian city,
London was to become a huge sprawling metropolis.
1 million inhabitants in 1800
would become six and a half million a century later.
Now the truest pictures of London
would find beauty and inspiration in the most horrific qualities of the city.
This immense view of the sprawling metropolis
was billed as an illusionistic scene designed to thrill and excite.