I have been involved in recording some radio programmes about the characteristics of East London which will be broadcast on Resonance FM in late April or May when my book comes out.   What comes across is the extent to which Michael von Clemm’s realisation that it might be possible to build a version of a north American city out amongst the old banana warehouses of West India Docks was the moment of greatest transition.   Either Piers Gough or Ellis Woodman made the point that the first great tower designed by Cesar Pelli follows the model of Egyptian funerary architecture:  it’s a stele.   It gives the development a monumentalism which is lacking in other London skyscrapers;  and it’s clad in aluminium rather than marble to reflect the London sky:-