London

This is a photo of Trafalgar Square taken from the entrance to the National Gallery. It's a fantastic vantage point, showing you from Nelson's Column all the way down Whitehall to Big Ben.

I took the photo Easter 2009 during a visit to London with the kids.

Funny, this is the one area of London I gravitate to whenever I'm in the city. I remember drunken stumbles down by Embankment tube station, and afternoons meandering through the National Gallery.

The square was originally to be called King William the Fourth's Square, until George Ledwell Taylor suggested the snappier title of Trafalgar Square. It was built to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar - work commenced in the 1820's and was completed in 1845.

A shot of the side of the Tower Of London's White Tower. I took this one when we were in London back in Easter 2008 - I never really got a chance to upload some of these at the time.

Since we're going to London again in a couple of weeks, I'm hoping to build up my portfolio of photos of the city. I think I've fallen in love with London again.

In 2005, Queen Elizabeth II unveiled this sculpture by John W Mills dedicated to the effort of women in the second World War. The sculpture stands in Whitehall in London north of the Cenotaph.

The lettering on the sides replicates the typeface used on war time ration books. There are 17 individual sets of clothing and uniforms around the sides, symbolising the hundreds of different jobs women undertook in World War II and then gave back for the homecoming men at the end of the war.

This is a picture of the Royal Chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula, which is located in a picturesque corner of the Tower of London.

An innocuous-looking building, it's a real joy to behold from the inside. On the day we visited, there was a soft light coming through the windows and illuminating the altar. It's an almost romantic setting...if you ignore the fact that underneath the floors are the bodies of three Queens of England and a number of Dukes and Lords of the kingdom too. Most of them beheaded, naturally.

A fascinating fact is that in order to make the bodies decay quicker - in order to make room for other headless dignitaries - the corpses were buried in quicklime. This shared by the excellent and entertaining Beefeater who gave us a brief but dramatic history of this small part of the Tower of London.

Who's buried in the Chapel?

Henry VIII was responsible for several of the inhabitants of the Chapel: his second and fifth wives are buried there - Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard can claim the Chapel Royal as their final resting place.

This is the National Gallery, which is situated on the north side of London's Trafalgar Square. The gallery was established in 1824, when the British government bought 36 paintings from a banker called John Julius Angerstein.

In the late 18th Century, there was a trend toward nationalising the royal art collections. This happened in Italy, Germany and France. However, Britain didn't follow this model and instead a series of events led to the establishment of the National Gallery.

First, Angerstein's collection became available. Then it was proposed in Parliament that the government buy the collection, strengthened by a generous offer by Sir George Beaumont to donate 16 paintings. Third, Austria repaid a war debt, which provided the funds to purchase the collection for £57,000.

The National Gallery was originally housed at No. 100, Pall Mall, but eventually moved to its current location in Trafalgar Square. The building was designed by William Wilkins between 1832-8, and the magnificent facade has remained virtually unchanged ever since, despite frequent expansions of the premises in the intervening years.

This is a shot from a perfect day I had in London a few years ago. I was over at a legal IT conference and had a bit of spare time in the afternoon, so I went for a walk around. I think it was a March or a May day, and the sun was beating down on the City.

I discovered a footpath that runs along the Thames from London Bridge over to Tower Bridge, and this is a picture of Tower Bridge taken from along that path.