August 2007 Archives

Parkes Hotel
41 Beaufort Gardens
Knightsbridge
London
SW3 1PW

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:52 ( 51.497866 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:09:53 ( -0.164739 )

A contaminated handle of of sheesha (hubble bubble) pipe and a seat cushion were found at the:

Dar Marrakesh restaurant
Rupert Street
Trocadero Shopping mall
Piccadilly

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:38 ( 51.510627 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:58 ( -0.132853 )

Best Western Premier Shaftesbury Hotel
65-73 Shaftesbury Avenue,
Piccadilly,
London.
W1D 6EX

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:44 ( 51.512222 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:55 ( -0.131908 )

It has emerged, months after the death of Andrei Litvinenko, that there some more sites which were deemed to be contaminated with traces of ²¹⁰Polonium.

One of these revealed by Westminster Council (via The Daily Mail) is the

Hey Jo "Gentleman's Club" i.e. lap dancing bar
91 Jermyn Street
SW1Y 6JB

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:29 ( 51.508131 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:13 ( -0.137033 )

London 2600 meetings (see http://London2600.org.uk) are similar to those held by 2600 groups around the world, and the other 2600 groups in the United Kingdom.

The quarterly 2600 magazine is available in London from Borders (Charing Cross Road and Oxford Street) and Virgin Megastore (Piccadilly Circus).

Everybody who is interested in computer and telecomms security and the impact of technology on society is welcome, from both sides of the fence, no matter what your age or level of skill and experience - nobody knows it all, no matter what they claim.

You could learn more at these free meetings than from months of study or investigation on your own, but this depends on what you are willing to share and contribute in return. We are mostly British and therefore somewhat shy in public, but it is easy to strike up a conversation with most of us.

London 2600 meet on the first Friday of each month, 6.30pm to 7.30pm initially, at the bottom of the escalators inside the central core of the Trocadero shopping centre, then on elsewhere. There is an underground passageway directly from Piccadilly Circus Tube station.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:38 ( 51.510539 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:59 ( -0.132972 )

The kinds of people who have attended over the last couple of decades or so include:

"computer hackers, phone phreakers, cyberpunks, performance artists, systems administrators, cybergoths, military intelligence officers, mobi chippers, skip trashers, hacktivists, network gurus, anti-virus programmers, penetration testers, multimedia artists, internet entrepreneurs, newbies, cybercriminals, warez d00dz, old skool, movie script writers, 31337, civil liberties activists, lawyers, radio hams, students, cool hunters, wannabes, djs, corporate security professionals, academic researchers, privacy campaigners, journalists"

Usually about 20 to 50 people attend each meeting, most of whom then participate in the rest of the evening/weekend activities.

email: meetings@london2600[dot]org[dot]uk

For the paranoid crypto-ninjas amongst you (like us !) here is our PGP public encryption key

For OpenPGP 256bit AES encrypted messages via 128bit SSL/TLS session, web based email, outside the direct jurisdiction of the UK Government, get a free Hushmail account and contact us on london2600@hushmail[dot]com

This Blue Plaque memorial to mathematician, computer scientist and cryptographer Alan Turing is not in central London, but in the South West suburb of Hampton, when he worked at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, after World War 2.

Whilst at NPL Alan Turing designed a ACE general purpose computer in 1946, a scaled down working model of which called Pilot ACE is now in the Science Museum in South Kensington.

Ivy House
78 High Street
Hampton
TW12 2SW

See Andrew Hodges'
The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook for more details of other such memorials, Blue Plaques and statues etc.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:24:55 ( 51.415151 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:21:33 ( -0.359262 )

Google Street View

As you travel on the Docklands Light Railway from the major Canary Wharf interchange south towards Greenwich, keep a look out for the nearby Harbour Exchange Square, which has several interesting buildings.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:56 ( 51.498976 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:00:53 ( -0.014769 )

The northern building (nearest to the Canary Wharf 1 Canada Square skyscraper)

Harbour Exchange Tower,
numbers 1 and 2 Harbour Exchange Square

used to house the United Kingdom Police's National High Tech Crime Unit, which has now been absorbed into the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which now no longer seems to give "new crimes, new technology" crimes like computer hacking or computer viruses or denial of service attacks any priority.

Incredibly the public internet website for this managed building still serves M$ Word document templates for various forms for things like

• Tenants Fit Out Guide
• Work Authority Certificates
• Landlords Requirements of Contractors during Fitting Out Works
• Minor Works Permit
• Visitor Form
• Removal of Equipment
• Fire Evac Procedures
• Actions to be taken by Fire Wardens
• Emergency Evac Roll Call
• Fire Precaution Details
• Assembly Points Location Map
• Layman’s Guide To Fire Systems

Which must make them vulnerable to thieves and spies who are willing to scribble an illegible signature at the bottom of a genuine security authorisation form.

Numbers 6 -7 and 8-9 house two separate Internet Data Centres, which are now owned by Telecity, and are linked to form part of the London Internet Exchange (LINX) system, through which most of the UK and Europe's transatlantic internet traffic flows.

Waterloo Station is the major Railway station in London, with Channel Tunnel trains and local busy commuter services.

William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition (2003) has the heroine Cayce Pollard take a train to Poole in Dorset from here

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:11 ( 51.502957 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:06:44 ( -0.112129 )

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) features the pedestrian bridge between Waterloo Station and the Shell Building, and the surrounding offices and a bus stop on York Road below, in the sequence where Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) slips a Guardian Journalist a pre-paid mobile phone and warns him of the CIA surveillance agents and assassins in the area.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude:(WGS84) N51:30:13 ( 51.503475 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:06:53 ( -0.114702 )

It is almost certain that any CyberPunk tourists to London will own one or more Mobile Phones.

Obviously these are now a core part of our modern communications society, but they are also increasingly being used for surveillance and snooping, by law enforcement and national security agencies, and by commercial vested interests, where they can get away with it.

GSM mobile phones (the vast majority, due to the relatively slow uptake of 3G PP
technology, the handsets for which in the UK are all also GSM capable) share out their government licensed radio frequency bands (900 Mhz and 1800 MHz for GSM and 2100MHz for 3G PP) by allocating a Network Provider, Base Station, Channel etc. "colours" " to each Mobile Phone Base Station transmitter, so that each "cell" around a particular transmitter does not interfere with its neighbouring cells.

In the sparsely populated open countryside or at sea, the cells cover approximately 35 kilometres (20 or so miles)

However within cities like London, the density of Base Stations and micro-cell transmitters is far greater than most people realise.

Here is an image published reluctantly by the UK Government agency which regulates the telecommunications and broadcasting industries and which allocates the radio frequency spectrum monopolies or licence free radio bands (such as it the 2.4GHz band used for WiFi and Bluetooth and some wireless CCTV cameras etc.). They deliberately make it hard to find from the front of their website and the data is out of date by up to 3 months, but it is still of interest: Ofcom Sitefinder website.

This map shows all the Mobile Phone Network Operators' Base Stations,- Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, O2,and Three - so any one individual phone will be handshaking with up to about a fifth of the total number in the area shown.

More on Location Based Services and Communications Traffic Data:mobile phone tracking:

The former British Telecom satellite earth station, with several large satellite uplink dishes in London Docklands was sold in March 2007 to become:

Docklands Teleport
Arqiva Satellite Media Solutions
Pier Road
North Woolwich
London E16 2JJ

The Nearest Tube station is "King George V" on Docklands Light railway (DLR).

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:59 ( 51.499709 )
Longitide: (WGS84) E0:03:47 ( 0.063067 )

The pop group Hard-Fi used this location for their 2007 music video Suburban Knights directed by Ben Crook, which has the band apparently breaking in to the satellite groundstation and "hacking" in to the system to broadcast their performance around the world, obviously unhampered by any security measures.

East of the City of London, lie formerly derelict London Docklands, where the Trade of the British Empire flowed to and from, in the days of break bulk cargo.

These have mostly been replaced by the Container Ports at Tilbury and at Felixstowe, situated further down the Thames river estuary, with access to deep water channels for the huge container ships.

The container port in Vancouver features in William Gibson's novel Spook Country

However, these former Docklands areas are being re-developed, and since 1990, they have housed the cyberspace telecommunications hubs, where most of the United Kingdom's and much of Europe's transatlantic Internet bandwidth flows via the London Internet Exchange - LINX and similar ventures.

Telehouse (now called Telehouse North)
Coriander Avenue,
London E14 2AA

Telehouse was designed and built in the late 1980's to house backup and disaster recovery mainframe computers for the financial district of the City of London some, 5 miles away to the west. It is linked to other data centres based in the new Dockland Canary Wharf development.

As the Internet took off in the UK, it ended up housing lots of Internet Service Providers and Web Hosting companies' routers and co-location server equipment as well, and its pioneering concept of a "computer hotel" and "co-location data centre", spread around the world.

This led to a second such Telehouse building (Telehouse East) being built next door.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:43 ( 51.512078 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:00:07 ( -0.002035 )

The fast cut music video for MTV friendly rock band Republica's world wide hit song "Ready to go" (1996), which has been used in several tv adverts movie soundtracks, sporting events etc. features the derelict industrial landscape of Docklands, with several shots of the lead singer Saffron with the original Telehouse building in the background.

See this Republika "Ready to Go" video on YouTube (needs Flash and Javascript)

The main visual landmark in central London between Oxford Street and the Euston Road is the British Telecom Tower, a microwave and fibre optic communications tower, which is central to London's telecommunications networks, and which sits between Cleveland Street and Howland Street and Maple Street (not open to the public)

GPS Coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:17 ( 51.521487 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:20 ( -0.138852 )

The notorious disgraced former Home Secretary David Blunkett had the rent free use of a UK Government owned property, in the exclusive Belgravia area of central London, both during his time as a Cabinet Minister, and , controversially for months after he had been forced to resign in disgrace. Blunkett was responsible for much of the repressive legislation brought in by the NuLabour government on the back of the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA., such as even more anti-terrorism legislation, the Extradition Act, and various centralised totalitarian databases.

His controversial re-appointment to the Cabinet to be in charge of the Department for Work and Pensions, was also followed by another forced resignation and another extensive use of the property at tax payers' expense. Such perks in the gift of the Government are known as "Grace and Favour" houses or apartments, but in Blunkett's case, this one became a "Disgrace and Favour" house, from which he conducted his adulterous relationship and fathered an illegitimate child.

Misleadingly described in lists of UK Government properties as ""Government house in Pimlico", this is actually in the much posher and more expensive neighbouring area of Belgravia at, 62 South Eaton Place, next door to The Belgravia public house, and within line of sight of Belgravia Police Station opposite Victoria Coach Station.

(photo credit Barry Phillips)

The anti-terrorism security modifications to the building e.g. CCTV cameras, blast / bulletproof windows etc. installed to protect the then Home Secretary (politically in charge of the police and some security agencies) makes this property, valued at over £3 million, as much of a prison as a fortress.

Update: 20th August 2009 - this whole block has now been demolished as part of the re-development of the Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.

=====================================================

Between Denmark Street and St. Giles Circus, which is where the Near Centre Point, where Charing Cross Road meets Oxford Street and becomes the Tottenham Court Road, there is a cheap Internet Lounge at 138 Charing Cross Road

This offers cheap internet access, and mobile phone unlocking and accessories, and cheap long distance phone calls. Be very careful with your bags, mobile phones,purses, wallets etc, as these are a target for the local thieves. The internet PCs are also rife with various bits of spyware and password sniffers, so do not log into something sensitive or valuable, and virus check any removable media like flopy disks or USB memory sticks you connect to the PCs .

The internet traffic also appears to be "known to the Police"

It is still worth a visit to observe internet low life and naive tourists in action.

Note one of the local "stinkies" peering into the window.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:56 ( 51.515434 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:47 ( -0.129745 )

Between Leicester Square Tube and Cambridge Circus is the Mocha Cafe Patisserie and Internet Café at
62 Charing Cross Road, on the edge of Chinatown. There is usually with a low paid (illegal ?) immigrant holding a sign advertising the Internet access on the pavement outside.

Inside there are about a hundred internet PCs, for which they charge£1 per hour. The usual warnings apply, - hold on tight to your bags and mobile phones etc. as these are targets of opportunistic sneak thieves, who are not deterred by the CCTV surveillance cameras.

Although there is anti-virus software etc. installed, unlike EasyInternetCafes, the software is not rebuilt after each customer session, so the risk of password sniffers etc. is greater.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:43 ( 51.512051 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:45 ( -0.129076 )

On the western side of the Tottenham Court Road, between Hanway Street and Stephen Street at 9-16 Tottenham Court Road, is the familiar orange and white branded Easy Internet Café with about 470 internet PCs.

They are open very late and have a prepaid voucher machine system to buy internet connection time. You are less likely to have your email or blog publishing or internet banking authentication credentials snarfed by password sniffers etc. from viruses or spyware, as each machine has its software rebuilt from central server images after each customer's session.

Next door, is another useful Sainsbury's supermarket for the purchase of food and drink (including alcohol at farless than the pub and bar prices)

N.B. it is illegal to openly drink alcohol in the street in this central area of London, either in the City of Westminster or the Borough of Camden - you can have your drinks confiscated by the Police or the Police Community Support Officers (who go around in pairs) and face a fine etc.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:03 ( 51.517405 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:54 ( -0.131581 )

There are other EasyInterentCafes branches at:

• Trafalgar Square (between Charing Cross station and the southern end of the Charing Cross Road
  456 - 459 Strand
  London WC2R 0RG
  (Trafalgar Square end)
  Number of PCs: 393
  Opening hours:
  Open 08:00-23:00, 7 days a week.
• Oxford Street
  358 Oxford Street
  London W1N 9AG
  (opposite Bond Street Underground station).
  Number of PCs: 268
  Opening hours:
  Sun-Wed: 08:00-22:00
  Thurs-Sat: 08:00-00:00
• Camden
  Post Office
  112-114 Camden High Street
  London NW1 0RR
  Number of PCs: 18
  Opening hours:
  Monday 08:30-18:00
  Tuesday 09:00-18:00
  Wednesday 09:00-18:00
  Thursday 09:00-18:00
  Friday 09:00-18:00
  Saturday 09:00-17:30
• Kensington High Street
  160-166 Kensington High Street,
  London W8 7RG
  Number of PCs: 394
  Opening hours:
  08:00-22:00, 7 days a week.
• King's Road - Chelsea
  Unit G1
  Kings Walk
  120 Kings Road
  London SW3 4TR
  Number of PCs: 98
  Opening hours:
  Mon-Thurs: 09.30-19.00
  Fri-Sat: 09.30-20.30
  Sun: 12.00-18.00
• Whiteley's Shopping Centre - Queensway, Bayswater
  Kiosk 4
  Second floor
  Whiletelys Shopping Centre
  London W2 4YN
  Number of PCs: 18
  Opening hours:
  Mon-Sun: 08:30-00:00

Update 20th August 2009 - currently shut for re-furbishment - will it ever open as a cyber café again ?

=================================

Just behind Goodge Street Tube Station, parallel with the Tottenham Court Road, is the site of what was the pioneering Cyber Café which started on 1st September 1994, with a single 64Kbs leased line and ten or so computers.

This is now currently run by Korean business interests as the Be The Reds (named after the South Korean world cup football team slogan) internet and gaming café , with a downstairs basement bar, and Karaoke booths, and an upstairs online role playing or shoot 'em up gaming parlour.

They deliberately have no website,but are located at 39 Whitfield Street (corner with Scala Street), W1T 2SF, telephone 020-7209-0984, fax: 020-7813-2825

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:12 ( 51.519987 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:06 ( -0.135036 )

In the story of the The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans (published in The Strand magazine, December 1908)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional master detective and spy catcher Sherlock Holmes, uncovered a a traitor through the use of a fake message inserted into a compromised private communications channel (newspaper personal column advert). Sherlock Holmes and then forced the traitor to lure the foreign secret agent and murderer Hugo Oberstein into a trap at the Charing Cross Hotel, at Charing Cross mainline railway station, and recovered the missing secret naval submarine blueprints.

The original story gives little detail of this climax, but the many subsequent TV and film adaptations tend to depict a classic secret intelligence agent meeting and arrest.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:30 ( 51.508334 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:30 ( -0.124934 )

This one was made from the antenna salvaged from an old (pre-WiFi circa 1989) anti-theft tag alarm system, thrown away when a shop was being re-fitted with new equipment.

It hives 3 to 5 times the normal range for WiFi snooping purposes, compared with a standard internal PCMCIA or USB WiFi adapter.

This homebuilt design, built on a standard satellite television N-connector, gives approximately double the normal range, and is called Phage after its resemblance to a viral Bacteriophage

Contact the Reverend Rat for more details.

The ²¹⁰Polonium murder of Alexander Litvinenko (See the Polonium-210 locations category) was not the first time that real life intelligence agency activities resulted in something even spookier than what is depicted in most fiction.

On 7th September 1978, Bulgarian dissident writer and broadcaster Georgi Markov was injected with a tiny pellet, by means of a device disguised as an umbrella, and died on 11th September 1978.

The pellet measured 1.52 mm in diameter and was composed of 90% platinum and 10% iridium. It had two holes with diameters of 0.35mm drilled through it , producing an X-shaped cavity.

The holes had been drilled by laser, not a common technique back in 1978.

Further examination by experts from Porton Down showed that the pellet contained traces of ricin toxin. Even if the doctors treating Markov had known this it would have made no difference because there was (and, as of 2007, still is) no known antidote to ricin poisoning.

Georgi Markov was waiting to catch a London Bus across Waterloo Bridge, to return to Bush House, the the BBC World Service building in the Aldwych where he worked.

This bus stop is located (since we drive on the left in the UK) on the southern side of Waterloo Bridge, by the steps down to the ugly, unfriendly brutalist architecture of the Hayward Gallery, one of the South Bank concrete "culture bunker" art galleries and theatres.The concrete ramps and steps of this complex attract skate boarders, and graffiti artists / vandals, who are harassed by the security guards and the police etc., who do little to prevent the periodic murders and muggings at night.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:22 ( 51.506181 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:06:55 ( -0.115166 )

Camden Town has several locations mentioned by William Gibson in his novel Pattern Recognition/em> (2003)

See Gil Williamson's F:F:F Pattern Recognition Gallery for photos of the area and of the "Childrens' Crusade" of young goths and punks etc. which happens at weekends, together with UK Ordnance Survey map locations.

Camden Town Tube station is close to most of these Pattern Recognition locations.

N.B. William Gibson's text names a street market "Aberdeen Street", instead of the real "Inverness Street" .- both are towns in Scotland.

The Inverness Street market is currently in a street war by technological proxy, involving CCTV cameras versus hoodie wearing drug dealers (mostly with links to Somalia) and the vested commercial interests of the market traders.

At a guess, the drug dealers and hooded youths are a problem which has not been cured, but simply displaced, to just out of sight of the spy cameras.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitide: (WGS84) N51:32:23 ( 51.539646 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:37 ( -0.143634 )

Cyber Punk and Cyber Goth or just hardcore dance club fashions and accessories can be found at:

CyberDog

Unit 14, The Stables Market
Chalk Farm Road, Camden Town
London NW1 8AH - United Kingdom
Tel: 44 (0)20 7482 2842
Open: Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-19:00

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:32:32 ( 51.542297 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:53 ( -0.148069 )

Colonel Ross (Guy Dolman)'s office at the north eastern corner Whitehall, overlooking Trafalgar Square - used in three Harry Palmer spy films, starring Michael Caine: The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967).

See the Harry Palmer Moviesite and Ipcress file film locations for more details:

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:25 ( 51.507063 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:37 ( -0.127033 )

British Museum
Great Russell Street
London
WC1B 3DG

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:08 ( 51.518970 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:35 ( -0.126501 )

The British Museum is close to the TUC conference centre, and the Forbidden Planet Megastore, where the William Gibson readings and signings from Spook Country are scheduled (see the Ground Zero category links)

The Great Court is an elegant roofed over central courtyard, with cafés and restaurants which is open

Sunday – Wednesday 09.00–18.00
Thursday, Friday, Saturday 09.00–23.00

See Ground Floor Plan showing the Great Court, and the cafes and bars and shops etc.

The British Museum houses a vast array of exhibits, some of which may be of interest to, CyberPunk fans of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, such as cuneiform clay tablets and seals from ancient Sumeria etc.

Science Museum
Exhibition Road
South Kensington

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:51 ( 51.497488 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:10:28 ( -0.174507 )

Apart from the general Computing section, there is special CyberPunk interest in the working model of Charles Babbage's mechanical computing device, the Difference Engine, which is on display.

Ada, Countess of Lovelace, was one of the first "computer programmers" who helped Charles Babbage to program his prototypes.

Both of these historical figures also featured in William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's "SteamPunk" novel The Difference Engine

The main Computing display also includes a scaled down working model of a machine called Pilot ACE. This was was Alan Turing Blue Plaque in Hampton High Street, in the outer London suburb of Richmond, which is where he lived during that period.

Alan Turing was also one of the pioneers of computer based Artificial Intelligence, giving us the Turing Test, so popular in science fiction. The "Turing Institute", which supposedly regulated advanced Artificial Intelligences (AIs) , features in WIlliam Gibson's famous CyberPunk novel Neuromancer

The Science Museum also has an example of the hand cranked Curta Calculator, as featured in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition

Also, The Science of Spying exhibition (until 2nd September), is aimed at children of all ages, and covers techniques and technologies of espionage and surveillance, and the basic science which supports them. [This exhibition is now closed]

The Spy Shop,
59 South Audley Street
Mayfair
London
W1K 2QN

Although some of the backroom, custom surveillance and anti-surveillance business has been transferred elsewhere, this location remains a source of corporate espionage equipment "for export only". Next door is the famous, long established, bespoke shotgun and rifle gunsmiths, James Purdey and Sons Ltd.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:33 ( 51.509265 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:09:07 ( -0.151902 )

The BBC TV drama series Spooks shows fictional MI5 Security Service agents in action.

Instead of Thames House, the series uses Freemasons' Hall, used by the United Grand Lodge of England, in Great Queen Street in Covent Garden

Freemasons' Hall
60 Great Queen Street
London
WC2B 5AZ

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:55 ( 51.515161 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:16 ( -0.121137 )

The author Ian Fleming wrote his first James Bond 007 novels, starting with Casino Royale whilst living at 16 Victoria Square in Belgravia, near to Buckingham Palace.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:53 ( 51.497997 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:42 ( -0.145024 )

Number Six's flat location at 1 Buckingham Place, is in the opening credits of Patrick McGoohan's cult classic spy sci-fi TV series The Prisoner

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:55 ( 51.498743 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:26 ( -0.140441 )

Catherine Place : The road junction on the left is the north end of Buckingham Place.

The building on the right with the security grille windows on the ground floor houses the offices of the "ethical" trade association for British Mercenary /Security / Private Military Contractor companies - the British Association of Private Security Companies at 57b Catherine Place.

Abingdon Street Car Park Ramp is in the opening credits of Patrick McGoohan's cult classic spy sci-fi TV series The Prisoner

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:52 ( 51.497868 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:34 ( -0.126171 )

The sensational murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a naturalised British citizen and former Russian KGB agent turned Russian dissident opponent of President Vladimir Putin at the end of 2006, by means of the extraordinary use of a massive dose of the radioactive isotope ²¹⁰Polonium is inevitably of interest to CyberPunk tourists with a penchant for high technology and the macabre. Exotic high tech poisons have

Lots of aeroplanes and several locations were contaminated with trace amounts of ²¹⁰Polonium, which is a very active emitter of alpha particles, which are usually blocked by the human skin, but which is lethal if inhaled or ingested. It is so active an isotope, with a half life of 138 days, that it tend to spall or sublime, if left exposed to the atmosphere i.e. atoms of ²¹⁰Polonium are knocked away from the surface by the vigour of the alpha particle flux from the bulk of the solid or liquid containing the isotope, thereby leaving minute traces at the sites where the victim and the poisoner(s) visited.

Most of these locations in central London are in Mayfair except for 1 Cavendish Place and UCL Hospital.

• Itsu sushi restaurant, 167 Piccadilly
• Pescatori fish restaurant, 11 Dover Street
• Sheraton Park Lane Hotel. Piccadilly
• Interpark House, 7 Down Street
• Millennium Hotel, 44 Grosvenor Square - where the fatal dose of ²¹⁰Polonium is alleged to have been administered in a cup of tea.
• 25 Grosvenor Street
• 58 Grosvenor Street
• 1 Cavendish Place
• University College Hospital 250 Euston Road

There are other locations which were contaminated with traces of ²¹⁰Polonium, in North London e.g. Litvineko's home in Osier Avenue 140 Osier Crescent in Haringey, Arsenal football stadium, Heathrow Airport etc., outside of Central London, either by contact with Alexander Litvinenko or with his alleged murderer Alexei Lugovoi.

N.B. all of these locations have been declared safe - remember the half life of ²¹⁰Polonium is138 days.

Also involved in this high tech spook saga, were:

• Metropolitan Police Counter-terrorism Command, New Scotland Yard, Broadway
• Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Whitehall
• Embassy of the Russian Federation, 6 - 7 Kensington Palace Gardens

Canadian High Commission

Macdonald House
1 Grosvenor Square
London W1K 4AB

Embassy of the Republic of Cuba

167 High Holborn
London WC1 6PA

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:59 ( 51.516372 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:31 ( -0.125411 )

See also the semi-live BBC Jam Cam image, (these are updated every few minutes, unless there is some interesting incident, when the feeds are censored), from the Shaftesbury Avenue / Princes Circus / High Holborn camera.

The Cuban Embassy is on the corner of High Holborn with Grape Street, very close to the two William Gibson Spook Country book promotion venues

Embassy of the United States

24 Grosvenor Square
London

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:40 ( 51.511138 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:09:12 ( -0.153195 )

The planned new US Embassy will be built (with a moat and landscaped defences) on the south bank of the river Thames, at Nine Elms, Battersea, between Battersea Power Station and the Secret Intelligence Service MI6 HQ at Vauxhall Cross.

See: New US Embassy design in Battersea - a fortress like the Tower of London ?

London has so much history, that there are many buildings, or sites of former buildings, which have strong historical connections with famous artists, architects, politicians and scientists and inventors.

There are several scheme involving the placing of round ceramic Blue Plaques (and some other colours) to honour these famous people, and to provide a photo opportunity and a bit of interest to tourists and historians.

Some of the Blue Plaques in central London, which honour telecommunications scientists, inventors, mathematicians and cryptographers are noted in this Blue Plaques category archive.

Embassy of the Russian Federation
6 - 7 Kensington Palace Gardens
London
W8 4QP

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:25 ( 51.506992 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:11:26 ( -0.190685 )

The refusal by the Russian government to allow the extradition or prosecution of the chief suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, namely Andrei Lugovoi, has resulted in a Cold War style declaration of 4 Russian diplomats and / or spies fromthe Russian Embassy in London, with equivalent retaliation against 4 British diplomats / spies in Moscow.

If you have a Hubertus Bigend style corporate expense account, then one of the top restaurants near to the William Gibson book promotion events is

The Ivy
1-5 West Street
London
WC2H 9NQ

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:47 ( 51.512946 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:42 ( -0.128247 )

Here you can see the rich , famous and powerful at work and play, or at least you can see their limousine chauffeurs and the paparazzi photographers hanging around outside.

Embassy of the People's Republic of China
49-51 Portland Place (western corner with Weymouth Street)
London,
W1B 1JL

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:16 ( 51.521120 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:45 ( -0.145800 )

Note the large array of various types of radio antennas on the roof.

There is a permanent Free Tibet demonstration in support of the occupied and oppressed country of Tibet (which was invaded by Communist China in 1950) , on the other side of Portland Place, outside the the Royal Institute of British Architects.

The Free Tibet campaign has been subjected to Chinese "cyber warfare" over the years.

Just to the east of Monmouth Street, about halfway between Seven Dials and the northern (Forbidden Planet Megastore) end, is courtyard called Neal's Yard.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:51 ( 51.514285 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:35 ( -0.126506 )

Neal's Yard is mentioned by William Gibson in Pattern Recognition, where Cayce visits a Pilates exercise studio. There are still Pilates, Reflexology, "healing crystals", vegetarian food etc. to be found in there, as well as corporate managed office space and skateboard fashions etc.

There is also a Blue Plaque dedicated to Monty Python, where the famous eccentric British comedy series / industry began its initial recordings.

The Short's Gardens entrance to Neal's Yard has a water clock sculpture. One shop to west, is the Neal's Yard Dairy Cheese Shop, which harks back to the original use of the premises.

This shop produces an overwhelming taste and smell sensation, with real "live" cheeses such as Cheddar and Stilton etc.. and is one of cyberpunk fiction author William Gibson's favourite shops in this area :

Friday, August 31, 2007

A SOVEREIGN FOR SOUL-DELAY
posted 5:03 AM
Yesterday morning I walked around the corner to Neils Yard Dairy and bought myself 200g. of the Montgomery's unpasteurized cheddar.

Asked for it by name. The clerk, in a proper cheeseman's cap, wrapped my interestingly discoloured wedge in that special white paper they use, glossy on the inside, folding it that way I can never quite master.

Now it's 5:23AM PST, back in Vancouver, and the Montgomery's cheddar really *is* a sovereign medicine for jet lag. And that is the reason it costs almost as much as heroin, in America.

Interestingly, now (20th August 2009), the offices above this Neil's Yard Dairy are being advertised as "Trendy Offices to Let"

Monmouth Street leads almost from the Forbidden Planet Megastore , at the northern end, (on the other side of Shaftesbury Avenue) to Seven Dials at the southern end, which are both mentioned by William Gibson in Spook Country and have been previously mentioned, along with Neal's Yard (just off Monmouth Street) in his previous novel Pattern Recognition

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:53 ( 51.514597 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:37 ( -0.126911 )

Monmouth Street has several quirky designer shops, as do most of the streets radiating from Seven Dials, especially Earlham Street, and the nearby Neal Street.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:49 ( 51.513735 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:37 ( -0.127018 )

The CroBar is a bar which attracts a slightly more well to do (bourbon rather than beer) rock music crowd than The Intrepid Fox.

It is at 17 Manette Street, opposite the side entrance to Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Next door is a shop which sells various occult items.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:53 ( 51.514830 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:51 ( -0.130807 )

There seems to be a growing consensus amongst the William Gibson Board tourists (see the Hacking the Gibson, in London! discussion thread) that they will meet up for a Chinese meal at the

New Laughing Buddha restaurant
12 Macclesfield Street,
London
W1V 7LH

although precisely when, is as yet unclear.

Macclesfield Street is about halfway along Gerrard Street, the main street in Chinatown.

The restaurant is next door to the De Hems public house which specialises in beers from the Netherlands, which is not too crowded in the afternoon, but is usually packed out in the evening.

The New laughing Buddha is to the right of the Chinese ceremonial gateway in this picture, looking away from Gerrard Street.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:43 ( 51.512040 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:52 ( -0.131224 )

London's Chinatown comprises of Gerrard Street and the surrounding side streets is full of Chinese (and a couple of other oriental) restaurants, and oriental supermarkets etc. There are also illegal Mah Jong gambling basements, money laundering and the hidden influence of the Chinese Triad gangs and the Communist Chinese intelligence agencies.

The restaurants all display their menus outside, so you get what you pay for. Other things being equal, I would choose one which has a decent view of the passing crowds.

Western end of Gerrard Street, corner with Wardour Street.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:41 ( 51.511494 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:55 ( -0.131967 )

N.B. As with all crowded areas in central London, watch out for pickpockets and bag thieves, including the old "distraction" trick, where one member of the gang squirts mayonnaise or tomato ketchup from a MacDonalds sachet etc, onto your clothing and then points this out to you. Whilst helping you clean up the mess, he distracts you enough to allow his accomplices to pick your pocket or bag.

Such gangs are not usually Chinese but are from Latin America etc.

CyberCandy sells imported US, Japanese, Korean and other foreign brands of soft drinks and peculiar candies and snacks. If you really need a can of Jolt Cola or Mountain Dew Code Red etc. then this is where you will most easily find it in central London.

3 Garrick Street
Covent Garden
LONDON
WC2E 9BF

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:41 ( 51.511277 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:32 ( -0.125678 )

CyberCandy is also just across a pedestrianised street from a branch of Tesco Metro city centre supermarkets for more standard British brands of food and drink.

N.B. the prohibition on drinking alcohol in the street in all of the London Borough of Camden - the Police or their auxiliary Police Community Support Officers can confiscate or pour away your drinks, or arrest you and fine you if you disobey, The CCTV trackers will call themin if you appear to be rowdy or even vaguely threatening by standing around in a "group", which is, astonishingly now legally defined as only two or more people.

(1802-1875),

Many of you will have used a Wheatsone Bridge during your physics lessons at school, to accurately measure the resistance of a piece of wire. This was also the technological breakthrough which allowed signals to be detected over trans-oceanic telegraph cables. He also invented the Playfair Cipher

The Security Service MI5 headquarters is called Thames House, and is at 11 Millbank, by Lambeth Bridge. This intelligence agency deals with Counter-Intelligence operations against foreign spies and also Counter-Terrorism against foreign and domestic terrorist suspects.

The southern part of the complex, 12 Millbank nominally contains the Northern Ireland Office, but it is inconceivable that much of this southern building, is not also used by MI5.

Thames House has been recently Designated as a Protected Site under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 section 128, which makes it a criminal offence to cross the outer boundary without permission, Strangely this boundary specifically exempts the main steps in front of the main entrance which is set back from the road. The pavement outside is part of the SOCPA section 132 Designated Area around Parliament Square, where you can be arrested for, in the opinion of a Police constable, holding a demonstration without having obtained prior, written permission a week before. The word "demonstration" is not defined so it could mean just wearing a tshirt with a slogan which the Policeman does not understand.

These restrictions on demonstrations have nothing to do with the "security" of Parliament, and everything to do with suppressing sometimes noisy political demonstrations, which remind the Labour Government of their failures over the Iraq war and other controversial policies which they have inflicted on us.

Perhaps the steps of the MI5 Thames House building are a legal Temporary Autonomous Zone.

Click on the image above to go to Google Street View, which passes along the eastern side facing Millbank and the northern side facing Horseferry Road, giving only longer range views of the Thames House building along its Thorney Street western and southern sides.

Ground level and aerial shots of Thames House have featured heavily in the BBC Torchwood sci fi drama Children Of Earth, screened on 5 consecutive nights in July 2009. The "13th floor" is where a evil extra-terrestrial monster known as the "356" installs itself as an "Ambassdor" via a "pillar of flames" descending from the sky.

See:the Spook Country blog article: Torchwood Children Of Earth - MI5 Thames House and the Government Car and Despatch Agency

The Secret Intelligence Service / MI6 headquarters building, at 85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall Cross, SE1 7TP, right by Vauxhall Bridge and Vauxhall mainline railway and Tube stations. SIS / MI6 concentrates on foreign intelligence operations i.e. spying, but has had roles in Northern Ireland as well.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:29:16 ( 51.487799 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:29 ( -0.124639 )

See also the semi-live BBC Jam Cam image, (which are updated every few minutes, unless there is some interesting incident, when the feeds are censored), from the Vauxhall Cross / Albert Embankment camera.

The distinctive building was designed by architect Sir Terry Farrell.

Apart from the basic cost of the land and the fabric of the building, and the subsequent secret communications and security fit out, the Italian marble cladding cost an estimated £60 million circa 1988.

This real life Spook Country HQ has also been used as a backdrop and film location for several James Bond 007 films i.e. Golden Eye (1995), The World Is Not Enough (1999), Die Another Day (2002), and Casino Royale (2006).

On September 20, 2000, at around 10:15 pm the building was attacked by a Russian-built Mark 22 rocket propelled grenade (RPG), launched from Spring Gardens park, over the mainline railway station, through which a train which I was on, had just passed through a few minutes before.

This blew out a small window on the 8th floor, in the central lift shaft/ fire stairs core (left hand window), but luckily nobody was hurt. The Anti-Terrorist branch of the Metropolitan Police attributed responsibility to Irish Republicans, specifically the Real IRA terrorists.

This building has been recently Designated as a Protected Site under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 section 128, which makes it a criminal offence to cross the outer boundary without permission, technically the curtilage i.e.the outer gates and fences and walls.

There is a Public Right of Way which is part of the riverside wall footpath, so it is still perfectly legal to walk all the way around this building, even on to the river side, where there is a marble terrace. You do get a good photo view of the Houses of Parliament and the MI5 Thames House, Millbank Tower and the National Gallery on the other side of the river Thames from there.

Jeremy Bentham(1748 - 1832) was a philosopher and reformer who invented the idea of the "Total Surveillance" Panopticon as a "humane" prison or military barracks design

(image from the Wikipedia article)

Jeremy Bentham's preserved body is on public display at the University College London, Gower Street campus. Bloomsbury, London.

"As requested in his will, his body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet, termed his "Auto-icon". Originally kept by his disciple Dr. Southwood Smith, it was acquired by University College London in 1850. The Auto-Icon is kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the College."

The Auto-Icon can be seen 07:30-18:00 Monday to Friday.

This colour plan of the Gower Street site shows the location of the South Cloisters between grid references G4 and G5

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:27 ( 51.524095 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:58 ( -0.132691 )

Alan Turing
(1912-1954)

Mathematical genius and code breaker, pioneer of computing and artificial intelligence. The Turing test is still the used to assess the progress of artificial machine intelligence towards simulating human intelligence.

The "Turing Institute", the "Turing police" etc. were terms used by William Gibson in Johnny Mnemonic and Neuromancer etc. to imply societal control mechanisms on uppity Artificial Intelligences (AIs) - not to be confused with the real life Turing Institute(s) set up later at various universities like Manchester or Glasgow etc.

The Blue Plaque memorial us at:

Collonade Hotel
2 Warrington Crescent,
Little Venice,
London W9 1ER

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:28 ( 51.524317 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:11:05 ( -0.184635 )

Google Street View

Charles Babbage
(1791-1871)

1a Dorset Street, Marylebone, W1U 4EE

Mathematician, Cryptographer and Inventor of mechanical computing devices including the Analytical Engine and the Difference Engine (see the Science Museum entry)

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a “SteamPunk” novel based on this The Difference Engine.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:12 ( 51.519876 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:09:17 ( -0.154759 )

Ada, Countess of Lovelace

(1815-1852)
12 St James's Square.

The first "computer programmer" of Charles Babbage's Difference and Analytical Engines.

See this BBC article and this University of Warwick article

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:28 ( 51.507743 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:11 ( -0.136415 )

The brown brick building on the corner, at 10 St.James Square, is the Royal Institute of International Affairs a famous diplomacy, security and intelligence think tank, known as Chatham House, famous for the Chatham House Rule:

"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."

John Logie Baird
(1888-1946)

22 Frith Street
Soho
Westminster, W1

Invented Television in this Frith Street attic laboratory - first picture transmitted on 2 Oct 1925. He also had other patents involving radar and video recording.

This Blue Plaque was recently mentioned by William Gibson in an interview with Steve Ranger of silicon.com:

"There's a blue plaque in London that says, in effect, 'Broadcast television was invented here'. Nobody in that room above the shop was filled with a kind of eldritch horror and a vision of a world of closed circuit surveillance - it was the last thing they were thinking."

Samuel F. B. Morse
(1791-1872)

American painter and inventor of the Morse code

141 Cleveland Street
Westminster, W1T 6QG

The British Broadcasting Corporation's original Headquarters in Portland Place, is also where Eric Blair, the author writing as George Orwell, took some of his inspiration for his dystopian bureaucratic science fiction novel Nineteen Eighty Four, when he worked there during World War 2.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:07 ( 51.518544 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:38 ( -0.143829 )

George Orwell used to drink in the Newman Arms pub in Newman Passage, leading on to the front entrance aat 23 Rathbone Place, nearby. This is also where the NO2ID Campaign, a cross party civil liberties campaign, against centralised Identity Cards and the rise of the surveillance database state, was planned.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:05 ( 51.518112 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:07 ( -0.135314 )

Between Goodge Street and the entrance to Goodge Street Tube Station are a couple of places of interest to CyberPunk tourists.

Firstly avoid the Scientology Cult who will offer to "test your personality" with their dubious electronic devices. If you accept their offer you have failed the gullibility test.

Next door at 70 Tottenham Court Road is a branch of Computer Exchange - very CyberPunk, with industrial metal floorplates and second hand computers, computer parts, mobile phones, iPods and console games etc.

You will need to provide proof of identity etc. if you try to sell them anything, but there are usually a few bargains to be found.

Micro Anvika have several shops on the Tottenham Court Road, but the one on the corner with 13 Chenies Street, is an Apple Macintosh specialist shop,

Also visible along Chenies Street is a World War 2 vintage structure, which is a tunnel extension from Goodge Street Tube Station opposite, which was used as bomb proof barracks in the run up to the D-Day invasion from Britain, and is currently used as a secure offsite data storage facility for documents, microfilms and computer backup data.

At the northern end of the Tottenham Court Road, on the University College eastern side of the road is the large retail chain PC World superstore at 145 Tottenham Court Road.

The Tottenham Court Road is of interest to CyberPunk tourists for the selection of electronic gadgets , mobile phones,computers, music players, spy equipment, GPS navigation equipment etc. on sale

There are various national retail chain stores and more specialised, often exiled Iranian owned, electronics shops, who tend to compete ruthlessly on the price and availability of the latest "hot" gadgets.

On the British Museum, eastern side of the Tottenham Court Road are a couple of shops selling cheap electronic bugging devices and hidden surveillance cameras, as well as GPS equipment and civilian grade night vision goggles (which are enough to get you arrested as a terrorist if you try to export them to say, Pakistan).

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:04 ( 51.517790 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:51 ( -0.130917 )

On the western side of the Tottenham Court Road, between Hanway Street and Stephen Street at 9-16 Tottenham Court Road,
is the familiar orange and white branded Easy Internet Café with about 470 internet PCs.

They are open very late and have a prepaid voucher machine system to buy internet connection time. You are less likely to have your email or blog publishing or internet banking authentication credentials snarfed by password sniffers etc. from viruses or spyware, as each machine has its software rebuilt from central server images after each customer's session.

Next door, is another useful Sainsbury's supermarket for the purchase of food and drink (including alcohol at farless than the pub and bar prices)

N.B. it is illegal to openly drink alcohol in the street in this central area of London, either in the City of Westminster or the Borough of Camden - you can have your drinks confiscated by the Police or the Police Community Support Officers (who go around in pairs) and face a fine etc.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:03 ( 51.517405 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:54 ( -0.131581 )

Another candidate for a William Gibson Board tourist meet up is the Point 101 bar, also in the shadow of Centre Point at 101 New Oxford Street.

This has two floors, with a glass frontage, and is quite large, but it can be crowded in the evening.

The Intrepid Fox public house, 15 St.Giles High Street

The Intrepid Fox public house, used to be situated in Soho, and was (in)famous as a music venue which attracted "alternative" lifestyle people. After the original site was sold to property speculators, it has moved to take over the former Sanctuary public house, in St.Giles High Street, in the shadow of Centre Point.

In this former guise, as the Sanctuary, it was the location for the overspill book signing of Virtual Light by William Gibson, back in 1994, which due to happen in the old Forbidden Planet bookshop, which was then on New Oxford Street.

This makes it very close to both of the Ground Zero events - the book reading / signing event locations at the Trades Union Congress conference centre in Great Russell Street on Tuesday 28th August at 7pm, and the signing at the Forbidden Planet Megastore, in Shaftesbury Avenue,on Wednesday 29th at 1pm - 2pm.

The pub has retained the decor of the old venue, but has more space,and, importantly for some, now that the "no smoking in public places"law has come into force in England, a bit of a walled patio where smokers can perch themselves, whilst still being "not more than 50% enclosed", without spilling out into the traffic.

It is a strong candidate venue for William Gibson Board tourists to meet up at before or after the events for a drink.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:58 ( 51.516017 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:45 ( -0.129101 )

N.B. this whole area around Centre Point, St.Giles High Street and High Holborn is not a safe place to be on your own at night - there is a lot of street crime from aggressive beggars, drug addicts, muggers etc. who uphold the old historical tradition of the notorious 18th and 19th Century slum The Rookery, which used to occupy this area, and which was illustrated by the engraver William Hogarth in Gin Lane etc.

University College Hospital is where Alexander Litvinenko was treated and died. It is also where most of the medical staff, restaurant and office workers, friends and business associates etc. who had been in contact with him, were tested for ²¹⁰Polonium contamination, although urine samples were sent off to the United Kingdom nuclear weapons experts at Aldermaston.

Approximate GPS grid coordinates (the Hospital is a big site):
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:30 ( 51.525087 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:12 ( -0.136788 )

Not in Mayfair but opposite the Langham Hotel near the BBC Broadcasting House and the Chinese Embassy.

1 Cavendish Place

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:02 ( 51.517092 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:37 ( -0.143542 )

58 Grosvenor Street London W1K 3JB

Various oil and gas investment company offices

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:42 ( 51.511547 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:50 ( -0.147227 )

25 Grosvenor Street, London, W1K 4QN

Erinys - private military contractor / mercenary company

and

Titon International -

"Titon International Ltd is an independent Business Intelligence Company providing a wide range of bespoke security and intelligence services to the commercial world both in the UK and Overseas. All Titon services are necessarily discreet and precisely tailored to the client’s requirement - client confidentiality is of paramount importance to us and is always guaranteed."

Both of these companies were set up by former senior British Special Forces officers, including Major General John T Holmes, DSO, OBE, MC Director SAS

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:43 ( 51.511950 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:50 ( -0.147095 )

Pine Bar, Millennium Hotel,
44 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London, UK W1K 2HP

This is where the massive lethal dose of ²¹⁰Polonium is alleged to have been administered to Alexander Litvinenko in a cup of tea, perhaps by Andre Lugovoi

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:39 ( 51.510718 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:09:04 ( -0.151079 )

Interpark House, 7 Down Street - offices of exiled dissident Russian oligarch billionaire Boris Berezovsky

(entrance by the parked cars on the left of this view)

This building is also the UK contact address for the Litvineneko Justice Foundation, founded by Marina Litvinenko, Boris Berezovsky, Alex Goldfarb and Louise Christian.

Mail to:

7 Down St, Second Floor, London W1 J7AJ, UK

1230 Avenue of the Americas, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10020, USA

Phone/Fax:

По-русски: +442075048756

English: +1(646)3900704

E-mail:

info@litvinenko.org.uk

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:19 ( 51.505340 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:54 ( -0.148199 )

Sheraton Hotel "Park Lane", actually in Piccadilly

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: N51:30:18 ( 51.504976 )
Longitude: W0:08:50 ( -0.147349 )

Pescatori fish restaurant,11 Dover Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4LH

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:30 ( 51.508223 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:30 ( -0.141727 )

Itsu sushi restaurant, 167 Piccadilly, London W1J 9EG, nearly opposite Old Bond Street.

Itsu featured in the early media speculation as the place where Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic / spook with whom he had been working The restaurant is now so popular with tourists, that it is expanding into the adjacent mobile phone shop premises.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:28 ( 51.507806 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:23 ( -0.139784 )

Exit from Leicester Square Tube station, on the Covent Garden side of Charing Cross Road, heading to the Cambridge Circus junction with Shaftesbury Avenue.

See also this semi-live BBC Jam cam traffic camera image (usually updated every few minutes, unless there is actually some interesting incident, when the feed is censored) from the Charing Cross Road / Cranbourne Street camera.

Charing Cross Road between Leicester SquareTube and Cambridge Circus - map via streetmap.co.uk

If you are interested in punk / goth / rock / metal badges, bracelets, jewellery, piercings etc. Strange Stuff (?) at 68 Charing Cross Road is worth a look (occupies the shop under the "Health Centre" sign) - www.strange-online.com

Across the road is the Mocha Cafe Patisserie and Internet Café
62 Charing Cross Road, usually with a low paid (illegal ?) immigrant holding a sign advertising the Internet access on the pavement outside.

Chinatown and its restaurants, Mah Jong gambling dens is behind this row of shops.

This row of shops was the home to the Murder One crime thriller and (former) science fiction bookshop, but they were forced to move into the much smaller former Sliver Moon women's bookshop, due to the rapacious demands of the property developers, dropping their science fiction books in the process.

Murder One bookshop is now located at 76-78 Charing Cross Road, i.e. on the eastern (Covent Garden) side of the road.

Cambridge Circus is the cross roads of the Charing Cross Road (north south) with Shaftesbury Avenue (east west). It is also the fictional setting of "the Circus" - the headquarters buildings of "British Intelligence", as portrayed in the novels (and their resulting films and TV series) of John le Carré, such as the "KGB mole hunt" in Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy

A Spook Country book signing session is scheduled at

Forbidden Planet Megastore 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London,WC2H 8JR
Wednesday 29th August 2007, from 1pm to 2pm.

Forbidden Planet Megastore location map via streetmap.co.uk

Latitude: N51:30:54 ( 51.514896 )
Longitude: W0:07:39 ( -0.127591 )

“Evening with William Gibson” event on Tuesday 28th August 2007, 7pm at the Trades Union Congress conference centre at 28 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS

Tickets £7 (£5 for concessions) via Blackwell’s Bookshop
- telephone line +44(0)845 456 9876 Mon - Fri, 9.30am to 6.00pm

TUC conference centre location map - via streetmap.co.uk

Latitude:N51:31:02 ( 51.517275 )
Longitude: W0:07:43 ( -0.128473 )

Those of you who went to the similar Pattern Recognition event may recall that the conference centre is in the basement with the stairs and lobby hand side of this building.