Peter Ackroyd's wonderful book 'London: The Biography' comes up trumps as usual ...

Hector Berlioz, visiting London in the mid-nineteenth century, wrote 'no city in the world' was consumed by so much music ...

There were German bands, as well as Indian drummers and blacked-up 'Abyssinians' who played violin, guitar, tambourine and castanets ...

The cacophony was immense ....

p184-5, Chatto & Windus 2000, ISBN 1856197166