There is a certain amount of doom-mongering in today’s FT about Canary Wharf following the news that HSBC is relocating to the City.

Oddly, I am rather pro-Canary Wharf having watched its development from when it was just a gleam in the eye of Michael von Clemm who was looking for somewhere for the back-of-house facilities for Roux Brothers, of which he was chairman. He realised the potential of somewhere where it would be easier to build high-rise office blocks with big floor plates than in the conservative City. Of course, the City was jealous and has itself allowed a square mile of hideous new development which presumably means that it is now not so expensive to rent office space in the City.

What may have been forgotten is that George Jacobescu kept the best site by the river for a cultural institution after Margaret Thatcher had offered it to the National Portrait Gallery to relocate from central London.

After the great success of the newly refurbished NPG in central London, might it be a time to resurrect this idea – not, of course, a total move, but somewhere with more space for its twentieth-century collection and its huge and wonderful photography collection ?

It could ease what looks like being huge pressure of numbers on the beautifully restored, existing building.

HSBC departure spells doom for isolated experiment of Canary Wharf – https://on.ft.com/3NBgDzM via @FT