In Hutchinson's version of history, Brummell tossed the world away for a witticism. Feeling a growing coolness from the Prince, the dandy disastrously upped the ante at a reception, asking the Lord accompanying the heir to the throne: "Who's your fat friend, Alvanley?" If he stands on his balcony, arrayed in all the style he can muster and waves at the procession, will the King notice him? Will his dreams of returning to English society at last be fulfilled?Playing Brummell with a lofty, pained fastidiousness, Bowles succeeds in making you feel that there is something heroic, as well as absurd, in this man's barmy determination to keep up appearances even in the most sordid circumstances. He lets you see that, for Brummell, the act of getting dressed is not so much a ceremony as a sacrament. When, having been ignored by George IV, he returns to take off his futile finery, there's a terrible pathos in the punctilious loving care with which he inspects, brushes and folds each decaying item.His relationship with the valet suffers, as theatre, from the fact that the latter sounds simply like a mouthpiece for authorial reflections on the hero. Through him, for example, comes the perception that this dandy was the precursor of all those moderns who are famous merely for being famous. But the contrast between Brummell's idea of revolution (private, sartorial) and the valet's (public, bloody) is rehearsed with wearying repetition, revealing the lack in this Beau of the intellect and dramatic mileage of the later exiled, destitute dandy he occas- ionally recalls: Oscar Wilde.To 11 Aug (020-7930 8800).

There is nothing quite like a piece of financial history for reminding one of the inexorable march of time. Only half a century ago, as David Kynaston points out in this concluding instalment of his history of the City, London EC2 was not much more than a bomb site and dividend-holders quaked at the thought of the Labour government. A 1960s photo of the Bank of England official Hilton Clarke marching sprucely along Threadneedle Street in his top hat looks as out of date as a coronation tea-mug ­ a symbol from another age, to add to the prep school rituals of the Stock Exchange and the rosy faces of the Cazenove partners, flush from their Christmas dinner.The story of the past 50 years of London financial life is mostly the story of a battle for control. This struggle was not without its ironies, as several participants ­ notably the Bank of England ­ ended up on different sides In the late 1940s, the challenges were clear.

With public ownership high on the political agenda (the Bank itself had been nationalised in 1946), "finance" looked like a straight fight between free enterprise and the command economy. There was an urgent need to kick-start an engine fallen into disrepair This took time. Much of the bomb-damaged fabric would not be renewed until the 1950s relaxation of building constraints. Many chief markets were extinct: the Gold Exchange reopened as late as 1954. There were more fundamental obstructions.