Like most films of the sixties, we begin with the then obligatory shot of the Post Office Tower.
The title of Jeffrey Fletcher's original book was deeply ironic since, as earlier viewers have already observed, from the moment this film hit screens it became as much a piece of history as the bygone world whose passing narrator James Mason laments; recalling the era when older residents of Spitalfields still remembered Jack the Ripper and the sixties destruction of Victorian London which began with the destruction of the Euston Arch was already well advanced (and has continued to this day).
Recalling that the East End of London in the sixties "is still recognisable as the world of Sickert", Mason seems genuinely concerned with the problems of the locals. While making no secret of his disdain for modern architecture and admitting that "most Victorian architecture was pretty hideous", he still hold out the hope that the sixties development of London was finally going to rid us of the Dickensian squalor the film sometimes graphically shows (such as a couple of winos fighting over a bottle of meths). But that was before a certain Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, and her political heirs continue to be determined turn back the clock even as I write.