London - City of Shadows and the Czech Government in Exile

Last weekend was a scorcher, we'd already arranged to stay over in leafy Wimbledon so that we could get us to the cricket at Lords in good time and M was working in the charity shop in the morning I bagged an early ticket into Liverpool Street. i was pre-armed with a Bayswater walk from the excellent http://www.london-footprints.co.uk/ . I was actually in search of the blue plaque for Hertha Ayrton in Norfolk Square. Bayswater is an interesting area - cosmopolitan area with large Brazilian, French and Greek communities - the latter being marked by the presence of St Sophia's Greek Orthodox cathedral and a blue plaque on Queensborough Terrace dedicated to Constantine Cafavy. The area is littered with some pretty monumental Victorian townhouses - now subdivided or converted into tourist hotels. To the North lies the Hallfield Estate designed by Denys Lasdun and Lindsay Drake necessitated by bombing around Paddington station, its a striking contrast. There are some interesting old / new old terraces marking the point marking bomb damage. Another mark of this dark period is the plaque at 3-8 Porchester Gate facing Hyde Park. It marks the site of the Czech government in exile military intellegence division. The Czech government in exile set up by Edvard Benes was recognised by the allied forces while Czechoslovakia was under German occupation. On our visits to Prague we found in the New Town on Resslova street the squat, dark Church of St. Cyril and Methodius. It's here where Operation Anthropoid, which was formulated all those miles away overlooking the park came to an end. The old crypt has been converted into a museum - in fact the last time we visited there was an armed forces day so plenty of uniforms thereabouts. Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich aka The Butcher of Prague, The Blond Beast and the Hangman (which gives a flavour of his personality) was botched, a catalogue of errors with Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš being parachuted into the wrong area of what was then the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The men managed to make their way to Prague and were sheltered by Czech resistance fighters before embarking on their assassination attempt on 27th May 1942. Despite malfunctioning weapons they wounded Heydrich and made their escape. They were eventually tracked down in the Church and knowing what would happen to them if captured fought to the death. Sadly that wasn't the end of it and the German occupiers sought reprisals most notably against the village of Lidice where the population were executed or deported to concentration camps and the village itself was levelled.