Piccadilly Circus

This guide to Piccadilly Circus in London starts with the winged statue everyone calls Eros, though sculptor Alfred Gilbert intended something else entirely as a tribute to Lord Shaftesbury. You'll follow Gilbert's costly perfectionism, the seventeenth-century tailor who gave the junction its name, and the electric advertising that transformed this crossroads. Listen for how a mismatch runs through the whole story of London's most theatrical corner.