Clancy Tucker's Blog, page 181

21 July 2017 - HIDDEN PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENGLAND

HIDDEN PHOTOGRAPHS OF ENGLAND
G'day folks,
F or some 30 years, a collection of nearly 4,000 slides sat undiscovered in a university basement in Sheffield. The lost collection of photographs, found inside a forgotten pile of boxes, has since been digitised by students of the University of Sheffield.

The JR James archive is a fascinating look at developing post-war Britain, a highly criticised era, blamed for the loss of English architectural heritage at the hands of socialist urban planners. Amassed over several decades, is a notably diverse depiction of England. It contains a considerably picturesque, charming and quaint England alongside some of the most radical concrete buildings the UK has ever witnessed.

JR “Jimmy” James was chief planner at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government from 1961-1967, as well as a professor at Sheffield University before his untimely death in 1980. He was known as a “titan of post-war planning”, lumped amongst those responsible for having destroyed many post-war British towns.

After the devastation of the World War II Blitz, England was faced with chronic housing shortages. To solve the overcrowding, town planners came up with utopian experiments to build “new towns”, “streets in the sky” and “garden cities”. Influenced by Brutalist architects like Le Corbusier, more than 20 of these designated “new towns”, were built in the first 25 years after the war.
Check out some of his photographs:





































Clancy's comment: Amazing shots, and no doubt some of you will recall some of these areas.
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20 July 2017 - JULIAN ASSANGE - WIKILEAKS

JULIAN ASSANGE
- WIKILEAKS -
G'day folks,
I'm sure all of you have heard of this man.  Julian Paul Assange is an Australian computer programmer and the founder of WikiLeaks, an organisation which he founded in 2006.
Assange came to international attention as the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
 “If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.”
—Julian Assange
Synopsis

Born on July 3, 1971, in Townsville, Australia, Julian Assange used his genius IQ to hack into the databases of many high profile organizations. In 2006, Assange began work on WikiLeaks, a website intended to collect and share confidential information on an international scale. For his efforts, the internet activist earned the Time magazine "Person of the Year" title in 2010. Seeking to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, Assange has remained at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012. In 2016, his work again drew international attention when WikiLeaks published thousands of emails from U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, an effort believed to have impacted that year's presidential election.


Early Life
Journalist, computer programmer and activist Julian Assange was born on July 3, 1971, in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Assange had an unusual childhood, as he spent some of his early years traveling around with his mother, Christine, and his stepfather, Brett Assange. The couple worked together to put on theatrical productions. Brett Assange later described Julian as a "sharp kid who always fought for the underdog."
The relationship between Brett and Christine later soured, but Assange and his mother continued to live a transient lifestyle. With all of the moving around, Assange ended up attending roughly 37 different schools growing up, and was frequently homeschooled.
Founding of WikiLeaks
Assange discovered his passion for computers as a teenager. At the age of 16, he got his first computer as a gift from his mother. Before long, he developed a talent for hacking into computer systems. His 1991 break-in to the master terminal for Nortel, a telecommunications company, got him in trouble. Assange was charged with more than 30 counts of hacking in Australia, but he got off the hook with only a fine for damages.
Assange continued to pursue a career as a computer programmer and software developer. An intelligent mind, he studied mathematics at the University of Melbourne. He dropped out without finishing his degree, later claiming that he left the university for moral reasons; Assange objected to other students working on computer projects for the military.
In 2006, Assange began work on WikiLeaks, a website intended to collect and share confidential information on an international scale. The site officially launched in 2007 and it was run out of Sweden at the time because of the country's strong laws protecting a person's anonymity. Later that year, WikiLeaks released a U.S. military manual that provided detailed information on the Guantanamo detention center. WikiLeaks also shared emails from then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that it received from an anonymous source in September 2008.

 Sexual Assault ControversyIn early December 2010, Assange discovered that he had other legal problems to worry about. Since early August, he had been under investigation by the Swedish police for allegations that included two counts of sexual molestation, one count of illegal coercion, and one count of rape. After a European Arrest Warrant was issued by Swedish authorities on December 6, Assange turned himself in to the London police.
Following a series of extradition hearings in early 2011 to appeal the warrant, Assange learned on November 2, 2011, that the High Court dismissed his appeal. Still on conditional bail, Assange made plans to appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court.
According to a New York Times article, Assange came to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012, seeking to avoid extradition to Sweden. Nearly two months later, in August 2012, Assange was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorean government, which, according to the Times, "protects Mr. Assange from British arrest, but only on Ecuadorean territory, leaving him vulnerable if he tries to leave the embassy to head to an airport or train station." The article went on to say that the decision "cited the possibility that Mr. Assange could face 'political persecution' or be sent to the United States to face the death penalty," putting further strain on the relationship between Ecuador and Britain, and instigating a rebuttal from the Swedish government.
In August 2015 the lesser sexual assault allegations from 2010 — with the exception of rape — were dropped due to statute of limitation violations by Swedish prosecutors. The statute of limitations on the rape allegations will expire in 2020.
In February 2016, a United Nations panel determined that Assange had been arbitrarily detained, and recommended his release and compensation for deprivation of liberty. However, both the Swedish and British governments rejected those findings as non-binding, and reiterated that Assange would be arrested if he left the Ecuadorian embassy.
On May 19, 2017, Sweden said it would drop its rape investigation of Julian Assange. “While today was an important victory and important vindication, the road is far from over,” he told reporters from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. “The war, the proper war, is just commencing.” 
Assange still faces a warrant in Britain for failing to appear in court, and the U.S. Justice Department said it was reconsidering whether to charge him for revealing classified information. 


 Influencing the 2016 U.S. Presidential Race  Assange and WikiLeaks returned to the headlines during the summer of 2016 as the U.S. presidential race was narrowing to two main candidates, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. In early July, WikiLeaks released more than 1,200 emails from Clinton's private server during her tenure as secretary of state. Later in the month, WikiLeaks released an additional round of emails from the Democratic National Committee that indicated an effort to undermine Clinton's primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, leading to the resignation of DNC chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
In October, WikiLeaks unveiled more than 2,000 emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, which included excerpts from speeches to Wall Street banks. By this point, U.S. government officials had gone public with the belief that Russian agents had hacked into DNC servers and supplied the emails to WikiLeaks, though Assange repeatedly insisted that was not the case. 
On the eve of the election, Assange released a statement in which he declared no "personal desire to influence the outcome," noting that he never received documents from the Trump campaign to publish. "Irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election," he wrote, "the real victor is the U.S. public which is better informed as a result of our work." Shortly afterward, Trump was declared the winner of the election. 


Personal 
Rumors of a relationship between Assange and actress Pamela Anderson surfaced after the former Baywatch star was spotted visiting the Ecuadorian embassy in late 2016. "Julian is trying to free the world by educating it," she later told People. "It is a romantic struggle — I love him for this." 
In April 2017, Showtime announced that it would air the Assange documentary Risk, which had premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival but updated with events related to the U.S. presidential election. 
 
Clancy's comment: What are your views on whistle blowers? I often wonder how much is kept from us, supposedly in the 'National Interest'. Mm ... Right. The current government in Australia is probably the most secretive of all time. Example: by not allowing journalists, UN officials, and even doctors to visit OUR asylum seekers held in prisons offshore - on two neighbouring countries. And, the cost of housing these people is extraordinary.
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19 July 2017 - FACTS ABOUT POLAR BEARS

FACTS ABOUTPOLAR BEARS
G'day folks,
The polar bear is a carnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses.


Polar bears are the largest land carnivores in the world, rivaled only by the Kodiak brown bears of southwestern Alaska. Polar bears sit at the top of the food chain in the biologically rich Arctic. The most carnivorous of the bear species, polar bears feed primarily on the fat of ice-dependent seals. The remains of these seals provide food for many other Arctic wildlife species, giving polar bears a vital role in their ecosystem.


Polar bears are marine mammals, and spend much of their time on Arctic sea ice. Many adaptations make polar bears uniquely suited to life in icy habitats. Their fur is thicker than any other bears’ and covers even their feet for warmth and traction on ice. A thick layer of blubber beneath their fur provides buoyancy and insulation. The long neck and narrow skull of the polar bear probably aid in streamlining the animal in the water while warming the air that they breathe, and their front feet are large, flat and oar-like, making them excellent swimmers.

 Diet Polar bears feed almost exclusively on ringed seals and bearded seals. They are also known to eat walrus, beluga whale and bowhead whale carcasses, birds’ eggs, and (rarely) vegetation. Polar bears travel great distances in search of prey.


Population
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) estimates that there are between 20,000-25,000 polar bears in the world.
Range & Habitat
Polar bears are only found in the Arctic. The most important habitats for polar bears are the edges of pack ice where currents and wind interact, forming a continually melting and refreezing matrix of ice patches and leads (open spaces in the ocean between sea ice). These are the areas of where polar bears can find the greatest number of seals.
 As the sea ice advances and retreats each season, individual polar bears may travel thousands of miles per year to find food. Polar bears are distributed throughout the Arctic region in 19 subpopulations, including Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland and Norway.


Behavior
Polar bears are highly dependent on older stable pack ice in the Arctic region, where they spend much of their time on the ice hunting, mating and denning. They are generally solitary as adults, except during breeding and cub rearing. 
Polar bears are strong swimmers, and individuals have been seen in open Arctic waters as far as 200 miles from land, although swimming long distances is not preferred since it requires so much energy for adults and can be fatal to younger bears.

Unlike brown bears, males and non-breeding females do not hibernate in the winter.

 Reproduction Pregnant polar bears need to eat a lot in the summer and fall build up enough fat reserves to survive the denning period. They seek out maternity dens in October or November. Most maternity dens are located on land where snow accumulates including along coastal bluffs, river banks or pressure ridges on sea ice.  Sows give birth to usually 1 or 2 one-pound cubs and then nurse them until they reach about 20-30 pounds before emerging from the den in March or April. 
The young are born from November through January while the mothers are hibernating. Cubs will remain with their mothers for a little over 2 years. Female polar bears can produce five litters in their lifetime, which is one of the lowest reproductive rates of any mammal.
Mating Season: Late March – May
Gestation: About 8 months with delayed implantation
Litter size: 1 - 4 cubs; though 1 or 2 cubs is most common


Clancy's comment: Another amazing animal on the planet.
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18 July 2017 - GREAT BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

GREAT BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY
G'day folks,
Welcome to some fabulous photographs from around the world, depicting the past.












































Clancy's comment: Brilliant work.

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17 July 2017 - WHY DRIVE ON THE LEFT?

 WHY DRIVE ON THE LEFT?
G'day folks,

Archaeological evidence suggests that the ancient Romans may have driven their carts and chariots on the left, and the practice seems to have carried over into parts of medieval Europe. 


The reasons for this are not entirely certain, but some believe it arose as a matter of safety. The majority of people are right handed, one theory goes, so driving or riding on the left would have allowed them to wield a weapon with their dominant hand if they crossed paths with an enemy. 



Until as recently as the 1700s, horse and wagon traffic was so light that the decision to drive on the left or right often varied according to local custom. Left-hand traffic finally became the law of the land in Britain after the passage of government measures in 1773 and 1835, but the opposite tradition prevailed in France, which favoured the right as early as the 18th century. These two countries later exported their driving styles to their respective colonies, which is why many former British territories such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India still drive on the left. In the United States, meanwhile, many researchers trace the beginning of right-hand traffic to the 18th century and the rise of freight wagons pulled by large teams of horses. 




Since these vehicles often didn’t have a driver’s seat, drivers tended to ride on the left rear horse to more easily control their animal team with their right hand. As the wagons became more popular, traffic naturally moved to the right so drivers could sit closer to the center of the road and avoid collisions with one another. Yet another major influence was car maker Henry Ford, who mass-produced his Model T with a left-positioned steering wheel, which necessitated driving on the right side of the road. 



These days, left-hand traffic remains the norm in Britain and many of its former colonies as well as in Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and several other nations. Nevertheless, with the rise of the automobile, many countries have switched to the right to fit in with their neighbors. Canada abandoned the left side of the road in the 1920s to facilitate traffic to and from the United States. In 1967, meanwhile, the government of Sweden spent around $120 million preparing its citizens to begin driving on the right.





Clancy's comment: I've driven on both sides, but I must admit it was a mental challenge when I first arrived in America.I'm ...

16 July 2017 - HUGH JACKMAN - AUSSIE ACTOR

HUGH JACKMAN- AUSSIE ACTOR -
G'day folks,
 Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor, singer, and producer. Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in a variety of film genres. I've seen him interviewed several times and I love his style. What you see is what you get.

Australian actor and producer Hugh Jackman is best known for playing Wolverine in the X-Men series. He's also known for parts in the films The Prestige, Australia and Les Miserables.
 “I have a terrific marriage, but unlike a lot of relationships where they ebb and flow, no matter what happens you fall deeper and deeper in love every day. It's kind of the best thing that can happen to you. It's thrilling.”
—Hugh Jackman
Synopsis
Born in Australia in 1968, Hugh Jackman began his acting career on stage, appearing in several Melbourne musicals, and later won a Tony Award for his role as Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz. Additionally, Jackman has won international recognition for his roles as superheroes, most notably as Wolverine in the X-Menfilm series, as well as parts in such films as Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing, The Prestige, Australia and Les Miserables. He was named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 2008.


Acting Debut
 Hugh Michael Jackman was born on October 12, 1968, in Sydney, Australia. The youngest of five children, Jackman was 8 when his mother left the family, and he and his siblings were largely raised by their father. He attended the exclusive Knox Grammar School and graduated from the University of Technology, Sydney. He got his first taste of professional acting on the stage, appearing in several Melbourne musicals. He soon entered the international scene, earning critical praise for his portrayals of Curly in Oklahoma!in London and Billy Bigelo in Carousel in New York City.

To mainstream audiences, Jackman is perhaps best known for the role of Wolverine in the American film X-Men (2000). Other early films include Swordfish(2001), Kate and Leopold (2001) and Van Helsing (2004). Despite his growing big-screen career, Jackman remains true to his stage roots. In 2004, he won a Tony Award for his lead role in Broadway's The Boy from Oz(2003-04). The following year, he won an Emmy Award for his turn as host of the 2005 Tony Awards.


Movie Roles
Back on the big screen, Jackman returned as one of his most famous characters, Wolverine, for X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). The action film proved to be a big success, earning more than $234 million at the box office. Working with director Woody Allen, Jackman starred in the mystery Scoop (2006) with Scarlett Johansson. He next appeared with co-star Christian Bale in the historical drama The Prestige (2006), a film about two rival magicians in Victorian-era England.
Also in 2006, Jackman leant his voice to two animated feature films: Flushed Awayand Happy Feet. He did some work on the small screen as well, appearing in the short-lived musical dramatic series Viva Laughlin in 2007. His 2008 thriller, Deception, failed to make much of an impression on the movie-going public, earning only $4.6 million at the box office.
Later that year, Jackman's highly anticipated work with fellow Australians Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann was released. Epic in its scope, Australia(2008) tells the story of an English woman (Kidman) who travels to the outback to find her husband, and ends up fighting for the land she inherited after his death. She is helped by a local man, played by Jackman, and the two become an unlikely romantic couple. The film received mixed reviews and was a box office disappointment.


 Commercial Success and Recognition Despite these setbacks, Jackman remains one of the most popular actors working today. He was named "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine in December of 2008, joining the ranks of such past recipients as George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.
Jackman also had the distinction of serving as the host of the Academy Awards in February of 2009. His next big film project, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was released the following summer. He soon followed up his summer blockbuster with several smaller pictures. In Real Steel (2011), Jackman played a father builds a better relationship with his son through training a fighting robot. He also appeared in the comedy Butter that same year.
In 2012, Jackman helped bring one of the most famous musicals of all time to the big screen: He starred in Les Miserables with Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried and Russell Crowe. In the film, Jackman plays Jean Valjean, a former prisoner who tries to hold on to the new life he has built for himself. Russell Crowe portrays the police officer on his trail. In January 2013, Jackman received a Golden Globe Award (best actor in a musical or comedy) for his Les Miserables performance. For his acclaimed role in Les Mis, Jackman was nominated for an Academy Award in 2013 in the category of Best Actor, but lost to Daniel Day-Lewis for his role in Lincoln.
On December 13, 2012, Jackman was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  According to the Los Angeles Times, Jackman stated during the momentous event, "I believe this is the 2,487th star on the Walk of Fame. However, apart from Lassie, I'm the only one who's gotten it for playing the same character in 15 movies."
After the immense success of Les Mis, Jackman took on a lighter film role in the comedy Movie 43 (2013). The film had several A-list names attached, including Dennis Quaid, Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Gerard Butler and Emma Stone, among several others. However, even with a star-studded cast, the film was highly criticized and did far worse than expected at the box office.
He reprised his role as as Wolverine in his next two roles, starring in The Wolverine (2013) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Jackman took on lead roles as the popular mutant hero in both films, and stars alongside other actors who have also reprised their roles from previous X-Menfilms, including Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy. Jackman has also continued to stay connected to his stage roots, hosting the 2014 Tony Awards. 
 In 2015, Jackman stepped into the role of the villain, playing the pirate Blackbeard in the Peter Pan-inspired fantasy Pan.

In 2016, Jackman starred as ski coach Bronson Peary in the biopic, Eddie the Eagle, about Olympic ski jumper Michael “Eddie” Edwards, and he made a cameo appearance in X-Men: Apocalypse. He made his last appearance as Wolverine in the 2017 blockbuster hit Logan, his ninth movie in the franchise. “I know this doesn’t sound right coming from an Australian, but at some point, you’ve got to leave the party,” he joked in an interview with Entertainment Weekly . “It’s time to go home.”
Jackman is slated to appear as famed promoter and Barnum & Bailey Circus founder P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman, which is scheduled for release in December 2017.


Personal Life
Married since 1996, Jackman and his wife, actress Deborra-Lee Furness, live in Melbourne, Australia, with their two adopted children, Oscar Maximilian and Ava Eliot. They met while making the Australian television show Correlli(1995). Jackman has been treated for basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer, and has advocated for prevention and screenings on his social media networks.




Clancy's comment: A thorough gentleman. And, not a bad actor and singer as well.
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15 July 2017 - TOP QUOTES WORTH READING

TOP QUOTESWORTH READING
G'day folks,
Time for some interesting quotes.






















































Clancy's' comment: Right. Now, back to work.

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14 July 2017 - FACTS ABOUT GRAY WOLVES

FACTS ABOUTGRAY WOLVES
G'day folks,
The gray wolf or grey wolf, also known as the timber wolf or western wolf, is a canine native to the wilderness and remote areas of Eurasia and North America.
Gray wolves range in color from grizzled gray or black to all-white. As the ancestor of the domestic dog, the gray wolf resembles German shepherds or malamutes. Though they once nearly disappeared from the lower 48 states, today wolves have returned to the Great Lakes, northern Rockies and Southwestern United States.

Wolves play a key role in keeping ecosystems healthy. They help keep deer and elk populations in check, which can benefit many other plant and animal species. The carcasses of their prey also help to redistribute nutrients and provide food for other wildlife species, like grizzly bears and scavengers. Scientists are just beginning to fully understand the positive ripple effects that wolves have on ecosystems.


Diet
Wolves eat ungulates, or large hoofed mammals, like elk, deer, moose and caribou, as well as beaver, rabbits and other small prey. Wolves are also scavengers and often eat animals that have died due to other causes.  Population Did You Know?
Wolves have unique howls, like fingerprints, that scientists (and other pack members) can use to tell them apart.
There are an estimated 7,000 to 11,200 gray wolves in Alaska, 3,700 in the Great Lakes region and 1,675 in the Northern Rockies.


Habitat & Range
Gray wolves were once common throughout all of North America, but were exterminated in most areas of the United States by the mid 1930s. Today, their range has been reduced to Canada, Alaska, the Great Lakes, northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest. Thanks to the reintroduction of wolves in 1995, Yellowstone National Park is one of the most favored places to see and hear wolves in their native habitat. Wolves require large areas of contiguous habitat that can include forests and mountainous terrain, and Mexican gray wolves can thrive in desert and brush in the southwest. Suitable habitat must have sufficient access to prey, protection from excessive persecution, and areas for denning and taking shelter.
 Behavior Wolves live, travel and hunt in packs of 7 to 8 animals on average. Packs include the mother and father wolves (called the alphas), their pups and older offspring. The alpha female and male are typically the pack leaders that track and hunt prey, choose den sites and establish the pack's territory. Wolves develop strong social bonds within their packs. 

Wolves have a complex communication system ranging from barks and whines to growls and howls. While they don't actually howl at the moon, they are more active at dawn and dusk, and they do howl more when it's lighter at night, which occurs more often when the moon is full.


Reproduction
Breeding season occurs once a year late January through March. Pups are born blind and defenceless. The pack cares for the pups until they fully mature at about 10 months of age when they can hunt on their own. Once grown, young wolves may disperse. Dispersing wolves have been known to travel 50 to 500 miles.


Mating Season: January or February.
Gestation: 63 days
Litter size: 4-7 pups  
 
Clancy's comment: Those teeth look fairly sharp.
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13 July 2017 - SOME FAMOUS LAST WORDS SPOKEN

SOME FAMOUSLAST WORDS SPOKEN
G'day folks,

Life is a struggle, and so is death for some people. The last thing anyone wants to do on his dying bed is to regret a life already spent and to exit the earth without saying a notable word. Most people on their dying beds mutter one or two things before they take their final breath and these words are said spontaneously. 
Death does not give anyone time to gather the best last words to say but there are several of these words by famous people that appear poetic, and scripted – some of the words are funny and others motivating. Death came to these historical figures listed here, in their bed, on the battle field or somewhere they didn’t expect it to come,  but they were able to say something distinct that is worth including in this list of best Last Words.

1. Louis XIV – King of France“Why do you weep. Did you think I was immortal?”
2. Errol Flynn – Actor“I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”
3. Humphrey Bogart –  Actor“I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.”
4. Winston Churchill – Statesman“I’m bored with it all.”
5. Jesus Christ – Savior of the world“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
 6. Lou Costello – Comedian“That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted.”
7. Karl Marx – Revolutionary“Go on, get out – last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”
8. Eugene O’Neill – Writer“I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room – and God damn it – died in a hotel room.”
9. James K. Polk – US President“I love you Sarah. For all eternity, I love you.”
10. Amelia Earhart –  Last radio communiqué before her disappearance.“Please know that I am quite aware of the hazards. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
11. Voltaire – Philosopher“Now, now, my good man, this is not time for making enemies.”
 12. Anna Pavlova – Ballerina“Get my swan costume ready.”

Clancy's comment: Interesting. Ever thought about what you'd say? I have.
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12 July 2017 - 16 SUMNER PLACE, CHELSEA, LONDON

16 SUMNER PLACE, CHELSEA, LONDON
G'day folks,
Welcome to a special boutique hotel. 
Here we are at Number 16 Sumner Place. Blink and you would actually miss it, the mid-Victorian white stucco terrace house blends ever so inconspicuously with the rest of the multi-million pound private residences.

Number Sixteen is a boutique hotel that feels less like a hotel and more like the London pied-à-terre of your wealthy bohemian fairy godmother, god bless her. Float through a series of deliciously Alice in Wonderland-esque living rooms to the Orangery, the in-house restaurant which begins in a bright conservatory and leads out onto a private, leafy garden where all of a sudden, it becomes hard to believe you’re still in the heart of London.

Just about the only noise disturbance here is the over-sized goldfish belly flopping in their shallow pond that runs down the centre of the garden, stopping before a wooden gazebo with cushioned seating and a table set for afternoon tea.
Now, check out these photographs:

























Clancy's comment: Scones and cream anyone? Maybe a cucumber sandwich?
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