Hello and welcome to this podcast brought to you by That's English!, the Spanish Ministry of Education's official distance learning English course. To find out more about That's English! go to www.thatsenglish.com or contact your local Official School of Languages. The next time you are in London and feel like getting away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre, you might enjoy visiting Hampstead in North London. You can get there by taking the Edgware branch of the Northern Line on the underground. Hampstead tube station is incidentally the deepest station on the London Underground, so keep your fingers crossed that the lifts are working when you go! Hampstead Village with its narrow streets and quaint, oldly worldly shops, and the hilly parkland of Hampstead Heath, with its views from Parliament Hill of the skyline of London, are without doubt among the most charming parts of the city. Hampstead was a quiet rural community until the end of the seventeenth century, when the medicinal attributes of its waters turned it into a popular spa town. However, this popularity was quite short-lived and by the end of the eighteenth century, according to the Burgh House and Hampstead Museum, "its distance from London, competition with other London spas and [ ] rowdy behaviour caused its popularity to decline." Nevertheless, "during this period, Hampstead had undergone substantial development and established its reputation as a healthy and attractive area." The arrival of the railways caused Hampstead to double its population between 1871 and 1891 and the opening of the underground station in 1907 turned it into a popular place for people to live, as they could now commute into central London. Hampstead Village is well known for its cultural and literary associations. This was the place that inspired one the most famous English Romantic poets, John Keats. The beautiful Regency-style house, where the young poet lived and worked, exhibits manuscripts and letters of the author of "Ode to a Nightingale", who was to die of tuberculosis in Rome at the age of 25. In Hampstead you can also visit Sigmund Freud's museum, at 20 Maresfield Gardens. This is the house where the psychoanalyst and his family settled after fleeing from Austria following the Nazi annexation in 1938. The most popular room is, of course, Freud's study, preserved as it was in his lifetime, lined with shelves containing his extensive library and an outstanding collection of Roman, Egyptian and Oriental antiquities. The centrepiece is the couch where Freud's patients would recline during psychoanalytic sessions. For more information, you can visit the museum's website www.freud.org.uk. In the period between the First and Second World Wars, Hampstead attracted many important artists, including the sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, the painter Stanley Spencer, as well as the Dutch abstract artist, Piet Mondrian. In the 1930s, Hampstead also witnessed the birth of modernist architecture with the construction of the Isokon Building on Lawn Road. It was designed by the architect Wells Coates for the furniture designers, Jack and Molly Pritchard, whose aim was to create affordable housing for city dwellers. The Isokon building was, according to the journalist Christopher Beanland, "radically different from what had gone before. It looked like a yacht [and was] made of concrete...the building offered all manner of services, including cooking, housekeeping, shoe-shining, window cleaning and sun decks; in the first Isokon advertisements, the spiel went: 'All you need to bring is a rug, an armchair and a picture.' ” Apart from the Pritchards themselves, famous residents included Agatha Christie and the founder of the Bauhaus School, Walter Gropius. To learn more about the story behind this visionary housing project, based on the modernist philosophy, which was to mark urban architecture for the following 40 years, you can visit the Isokon Gallery. And in Hampstead you will also find, in Willow Road, another modernist building, designed by the Hungarian-born architect, Erno Goldfinger, which triggered the animosity of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, to the point that he based the villain of the 007 novel of the same name on the architect. Goldfinger made himself unpopular with Fleming and other neighbours when several cottages were demolished to allow for the building of the three terraced modernist houses. Number 2 is the largest of the three and was where Goldfinger lived with his family. Goldfinger, who was an important figure of the British Modern Movement, designed some of London's more controversial high-rise flats, believing this type of architecture to be the solution to the city's post-war housing problems. According to journalist John Ezard, Goldfinger was "a champion of communism, an eccentric [and] a bully." When he found out that the creator of 007 had used his name and some aspects of his character for the villain and title of his new novel, Goldfinger was so furious that he decided to take legal action against the writer. The dispute was finally settled out of court but only after the architect was victim of spoof telephone calls made by Bond fans, who would call him in the middle of the night saying that they were agent 007. The interior design of Goldfinger's house is in a modernist style and contains the architect's impressive modern art collection, with works by artists such as Henry Moore, Max Ernst, Jean Arp or Man Ray. The building now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. Heading towards Hampstead Heath, you can visit Kenwood House, an example of 18th century architecture, surrounded by beautiful landscaped gardens. Finally, you can enjoy a walk on Hampstead Heath itself and up to Parliament Hill, which is one of the best places to admire the skyline of London. On a windy day you will find people flying their kites - hence its nickname Kite Hill. Once you have enjoyed the views, you can walk back through the woodland to Spaniards Inn, one of London's oldest pubs. It dates back to the sixteenth century and was immortalised by Charles Dickens in "The Pickwick Papers." It is also said to be where Keats wrote his famous "Ode to a Nightingale." Apart from its interesting historical background, with its garden in the summertime and cosy fires in the winter, the Spaniards Inn is an ideal place at any time of the year to relax and to try out any of the beers on offer, which are matched to different dishes on the menu. Well, we hope you have enjoyed this little tour around Hampstead and we look forward to seeing you there, next time you are here in London. We hope you have enjoyed this podcast, brought to you by That's English! Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We look forward to hearing from you. Bye for now!