Most of the candidates for Jack the Ripper have fatal flaws. For example, the queen’s doctor Sir William Gull. In 1887, Sir William Gull suffered the first of several strokes at his Scottish home, Urrard House, Killiecrankie. The attack of hemiplegia and aphasia was caused by a cerebral haemorrhage. He recovered after a few weeks and returned to London, but was under no illusions about the danger to his health, remarking "One arrow had missed its mark, but there are more in the quiver".

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Hidden away in Bury Street, by the Gherkin, in the north east of the City is Holland House, one of Europe’s most important buildings. It may well be the first on the Continent to be constructed on a steel frame.

It was built in 1914-16 by the Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage for the Kroller-Mullers shipping company. Berlage had been deeply influenced by a visit to the US in 1911, especially by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The surface is decorated with green tiles, giving a highly distinctive app...

Lancelot Andrewes is hardly a household name, but he arguably had as much influence on the English language as William Shakespeare. Andrewes would have walked the same London streets as Shakespeare. He was born in the shadows of the Tower of London in 1555 and has a handsome tomb in what is now Southwark Cathedral, close to Shakespeare’s Globe. He was one of the most respected theologians and translators of his day and rose to become the Bishop of Winchester. He was the last Bishop of Winch...