All of London’s seedy poetry is there to see in the setting for TV thriller Slow Horses

Herron chose the home of his “post-useful crew of misfits” well. Aldersgate, at the edge of the old city walls, marked the boundary, in Peter Ackroyd’s history, of “Cripplegate without”, medieval and Elizabethan home to “magicians and prostitutes and pickpockets and playwrights” and to the “stink industries” – tanneries and breweries and knacker’s yards. You can smell that indelible past in the fabric and furniture of Slow Horses. Traces of it might be detected, too, in the current ad for office space to rent at 126 Aldersgate Street – which makes no mention of the famous association – but which could be yours with “kitchenette, 2 wcs and good natural light” for £34.50 per square foot per annum.