‘Crafty and Fawning’: Downing of Downing Street
In his lifetime George Downing was regarded as ‘ready to turn to every side that was uppermost’, but even Pepys was grudgingly forced to admit his qualities in eighteenth-century political life.
Synonymous with the heart of British government, ‘Downing Street’ is one of those oddities of English history which, like ‘beefeaters’, the woolsack, or the quaintly-named ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer’, baffle foreigners and defy easy or even rational explanation. In most countries it is customary to name important thoroughfares after national heroes, but who (we seldom ask, and rarely know) was the man who gave his name to this dingy but distinguished backwater?
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