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 upmarket shops and luxury hotels, which are still a feature of the area.

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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 pervades 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 lived. 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.