London as the 'City of Dreadful Night'

Experience the dinge and gloom of the smog shrouding London's Trafalgar Square in the 1920s.

There's a playful futility to this bitesize Topical Budget newsreel item, which comically showcases just how difficult photography in the fog actually is: this smog almost completely shrouds London's Trafalgar Square in darkness. But the newsreel manages to spin the story of "the worst fog for 20 years" into a technical triumph – its "special lenses pierce the gloom"… barely.

Digitisation supported by the London Topographical Society.