ST JAMES'S, MAYFAIR and MARYLEBONE emerged in the late seventeenth century as London's first real suburbs, characterized by grid-plan streets feeding into grand, formal squares. This expansion set the westward trend for middle-class migration, and as London's wealthier consumers moved west, so too did the city's more up market shops and luxury hotels, which are still a feature of the area.

Aristocratic St James's, the rectangle of land to the north of St James's Park, was one of the first areas to be developed, and remains the preserve of the seriously rich. Piccadilly, which forms the border between St James's and Mayfair, is no longer the fashionable promenade it once was, but a whiff of exclusivity still parades Bond Street and its tributaries. Regent Street was created as a new "Royal Mile", a tangible borderline to shore up these new fashionable suburbs against the chaotic maze of Soho and the City, where the working population still lied. Now, along with Oxford Street, it has become London's busiest shopping district - it's here that Londoners mean when they talk of "going shopping up the West End".

Marylebone, which lies to the north of Oxford Street, is another grid-plan Georgian development, a couple of social and real-estate leagues below Mayfair, but a wealthy area nevertheless. It boasts a very fine art gallery, the Wallace Collection, and, in its northern fringes, one of London's biggest tourist attractions, Madame Tussaud's, the oldest and largest wax museum in the world.

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