Disraeli's Young Duke 1828

An early admirer of the semi-rural territory north of the Marylebone Road was Benjamin Disraeli’s fictional Duke of St James’ who took  his way to the Regent’s Park, a wild sequestered spot — the spring sun was setting and flung a crimson flush over the blue water and the white houses — would it not be delightful to be able in an instant to fly from the formal magnificence of a London mansion?

(mentioned by Malcolm Brown in his address to the St John’s Wood Society 30 October 1997)