4 Star

The 50-Year Question, Was He Conned.

Once again we are educated by Mr Jon-Paul Gates (The Color of your skin, Vampires True or Fiction, Rescue Me: International – Cat Rescue, Love on Demand), this time it is all about the events in the 1960s when the historic London Bridge came to the end of its life, and somehow it ended up in Arizona desert in the USA. As usual, Mr Gates goes in depth into the subject, getting expert advice, and talking to American businessmen to get their opinions on those events of the late 1960s.

In 1968 American multimillionaire Robert P. McCulloch paid 10 million US dollars for lots and lots of granite. This granite was formally the sinking London Bridge, McCulloch bought this granite as a centrepiece for his newly built town and leisure resort ‘Lake Havasu’ Arizona. For years, London Bridge was not fit for the growing use of motor vehicles in the swinging UK Capital, plus it was all sinking one inch every eight years. Normally the progress city just tore down Victorian buildings and dump the stones as breakwaters etc.

A quick minded Mr Ivan Lukin said, why don’t we sell it. This is where Mr Gates brings in Journalist and author Travis Elborough (Wish You Were Here, The Bus we Loved). The question everybody since the day of sale, and to this day, ask the question. Was Robert P. McCulloch conned, did he believe that he was buying the icon but only a hundred-year-old Tower Bridge?

Or was McCulloch going for the two thousand year history from the Romans in 43 AD to the swinging sixties. Let Mr Gates and Mr Elborough explain it all.

As usual, Jon-Paul Gates asks concise questions, and postulations in his dulcet tone, that lets all the information flow into you.