Central London Lockdown

Photograph(s) Two: Central London. May 2nd and 4th 2020.

In the very early stages of lockdown, Central London seemed like a no-go zone. I remember seeing a set of photographs taken by newsreader, Sophie Rayworth, which showed all the familiar tourist hotspots almost eerily empty.

On two occasions, quite close together, I found myself walking into Central London, once with my friend Michael and once with Nathan, on both occasions to experience something I felt I would never have a chance to witness again. And some of the things we saw on those two walks have embedded themselves in my mind, probably forever. They were both deeply moving and hugely magical.

The most astonishing aspect was the complete silence. The nearer to the centre of London we walked, the more empty it became. Take away the tourists, the workers, the theatre goers, the revellers and the people who have second homes in the country, and you’re not left with a great many people. Food shops up in Finchley were open and positively thriving, but everything in the West End was closed, and a great many shops and cafes were entirely boarded over. Some of the larger shops like Liberty and Selfridges had security guards standing outside, and very often these were the only people we saw.

Standing on the South Bank and being able to hear nothing but the wind rustling the masts of boats on the Thames was hugely eerie. Hearing St Paul’s Cathedral’s bells chiming the hour whilst crossing an entirely deserted Hungerford Bridge some 2 kilometres away was nothing short of miraculous. Walking around Covent Garden and hearing our footsteps echoing in the roof of the covered market was beyond spooky. Whilst with Michael, I walked for about four blocks, all the time hearing the sound of an alarm in the misty night air. It was the sort of sound which would have been blotted out by traffic noise within a second of hearing it in a normal London.

Piccadilly Circus was particularly weird. The huge LED billboards had been replaced by a giant, blue screen which merely read “NHS”. There were no cars. Almost no people. The occasional bus or cyclist drifted past, silhouetted perfectly against the dark light. You could hear the spokes of the bicycle wheels clicking as they passed.


On one of my visits, I chatted to a homeless man whilst standing on the steps underneath Eros. These steps are usually packed with tourists screaming at each other in a hundred different languages over the yells of traffic, but we were almost whispering to each other. “Where did you study?” asked the incredibly well-spoken, middle-aged homeless man, half way through our chat, “York” I said… “ah, I’m an Oxford man, myself…”

Nathan became rather tearful whilst walking down an empty Shaftesbury Avenue underneath the glowing marquees of the closed theatres. This is his world - his community - and seeing the ghosts of shows was too much for him. For me, standing in the middle of that particularly road took me back to an Autumnal Sunday morning in 2006 when we were shooting the apocalyptic movie, 28 Weeks Later. I worked both as a casting director and as the acting coach on the film, and we did a lot of filming on empty streets. I wrote about it in my blog on March 30th this year. We shot a sequence in the very spot where I was standing on Shaftesbury Avenue - and, to be fair, everything was as crazily empty back then… except for the massive film crew. And, even at 6am on that Sunday morning, we had to do pedestrian and traffic lock-offs for three minutes at a time. We’d finish the shot and then a stream of bemused people and angry-looking drivers would file past. This wasn’t the case back in early May this year…

The other notable aspect of my trips into Central London was the darkness. This was partially created by many of the main landmarks, including the London Eye, the National Theatre and the fountains in Trafalgar Square being lit up in the dark blues and purples of the NHS colours, but it was further enhanced by large areas of the city not being lit up at all. Large swathes of buildings on the Thames were in complete darkness and most of the bridges were unlit. And possibly, as a result of less pollution (both light and from traffic fumes), the skies were much darker. I have never seen stars in the skies above central London before. I’m used to a sort of milky, orange, halogen glow, with clouds reflecting light back into the city. Not so on May 4th.