"Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows in dire despondency." That's how one local resident described the slum of AgarTown: a hotbed of disease and crime. Today we know it as King's Cross, but Charles Dickens' description isn't so far removed - and it still has a reputation for being a place where drug dealers and prostitutes ply their trades. But not for much longer. The area that has long been a byword for urban misery is starting to undergo big changes. Behind the wooden hoardings around St Pancras, a terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is being constructed. When it's completed in 2007. it will turn King's Cross into Britain's front door on to the Continent.
展开▼
