34-36 High Holborn WC1

 The Artist as Hephaestus (1987) could be by no-one but Eduardo Paolozzi, a perfect example of his brutalist style, looking as though the work had been sawn into sections and then carelessly reassembled with all the bits slightly out of alignment.
Hephaestus was the Greek equivalent of Vulcan. He was a sort of divine Q, supplying all the Gods with their gadgets. He made Hermes's winged helmet and sandals, Aegis's breastplate, Eros's bow and arrows and Helios's chariot.
Paolozzi portrays himself holding a number of strange-looking objects. Are they mystical machines such as Hephaestus might have knocked up for his divine clients? They look a bit like impedimenta from a foundry, perhaps items associated with the lost wax process Paolozzi used so extensively.
Paolozzi suggests the Hephaestus's lameness by making one leg slightly shorter than the other and  moulding his left foot as though it is fused to the block under it.

27 Southampton Street WC2

27 Southampton Street dates from 1707  but its main interest is, unusually, the plaque over the front door put up in 1900 to commemorate the residency of the actor, impressario and Shakespeare idoliser David Garrick.for nearly 30 years.
The plaque is unusual on several counts. Firstly, its quality and cost (it is cast bronze). Secondly, unlike most plaques it is the work of a top-flight sculptor, Henry Fehr. And thirdly, it was paid for by the freeholder, the Duke of Bedford, who was not known for his generosity. He even got his personal architect, Charles Fitzroy Doll, to sketch out the design.
A bust of Garrick circled with a laurel wreath stands on a plinth with the inscription. On either side stand two Muses, helpfully labeled. Less helpfully for today's Londoners, the labels are in Greek, but one of the advantages of a scientific education is a working knowledge of the Greek alphabet so I was able after only a bit of head-scratching to identify them as Melpomene (left) and Thalia (right).
Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, holds her dagger in her right hand. She traditionally also carries a club but Fehr clearly thought that would be rather unladylike so she holds a slim, elegant mace with a crown hanging round it instead.
Thalia holds the mask of comedy and a shepherdess's crook. Both are sad and pensive

Former Catesby's Store, 64-67 Tottenham Court Road W1

The top end of Tottenham Court Road was the place where the super-rich of Edwardian London furnished their houses, trooping round Heals, Maples and Catesby's, the latter being where they bought carpets for upstairs and linoleum for downstairs. The area was so expensive that the plutocratic Baron de Rothschild could quite seriously justify his passion for buying antique French furniture by saying "it's cheaper than going to Maples."
In 1904 Edward Catesby rebuilt his store in a flamboyant Free Renaissance with Arts and Crafts touches. The architect was Henry A. Whitburn, whose initials appear like very polite grafitti behind the dragon in the tippy-top gable at the centre of his facade.
Catesby's initial appears much more ornately carved and prominently positioned, but as he was paying for it I suppose that was fair dos.
My absolute favourite sculptures are the storks under the bow windows on the fourth floor. They have the ungainliness of Martin pottery birds, with those faintly ridiculous beaks and spindly legs.

Minerva House, North Crescent WC1

The Minerva Motor Company was a Belgian luxury marque that once had a reputation as high as Rolls Royce or Mercedes.
This ad appeared in 1905 ad in the Ashburton Guardian - note the car's top speed of 'up to 25 miles per hour and the added inducement 'Purchasers taught to drive free of charge'. I bet you got what you paid for.
The price of £176 equates roughly to £15,000 now, which seems cheap for a top quality car but you didn't get many of the features we take for granted today. Such as a roof, for example.
The Minerva Motor Company built a swanky headquarters and repair shop just off the Tottenham Court Road in 1912 which was rather bad timing. Minerva survived the First World War by building armoured cars, as Rolls Royce did.
Their London HQ was designed by George Vernon and decorated with a statue of Minerva. Regretably, there does not seem to be any record of the sculptor. Even more regretably, the architect placed Minerva in front of a window which now looks extremely tawdry. As a final indignity, the landscaped park she used to look out on was destroyed in 1941 when the lifts were installed for government bomb shelters. The unsightly structures are still there.

Covent Garden Market WC2

The charming allegorical group stands on the east end of the Charles Fowler's Market House of 1828. Two women support Cupid, who stands on a plinth. One holds a laurel wreath over his head as the other adjusts a swag of flowers and fruit around a cornucopia. The material is the famous artificial stone made by Mrs Coade at her factory in Lambeth. The modeller was R.W. Sievers, about whom I have been able to discover nothing.

Old Middlesex Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green EC1

Middlesex built its court house in a rather dreary, industrial area on the northern edge of Georgian London, so it must have stood out considerably when it was newly built amid the workshops and factories of Clerkenwell in 1779. The architect was Thomas Rogers, the county surveyor.
The good burghers clearly decided to push the boat out and got Joseph Nollekens to carve the panels on the facade. He was probably the most famous sculptor in England at that time - when he had become a member of the Royal Academy just seven years before, his diploma had been signed personally by King George III. A bust of the King appears over the central window.
To the monarch's right is Justice, seated and correctly wearing no blindfold. She holds a drawn sword in her left hand and scales with her right.
On the left sits Mercy, her sword sheathed and holding a sceptre with a dove of peace perching on the crown.

Nollekens was the London-born son of a Dutch painter, and was said to have been abundantly naturally talented but rather dim. He made an enormous sum of money when he went to Rome on a study tour and found a lucrative market sculpting souvenir busts of visiting English notables, including David Garrick and Laurence Sterne. He also bought fragments of Roman sculpture and added all the missing limbs to sell to credulous collectors as perfect specimens.
The court house pediment is filled with the arms of Middlesex, probably not by Nollekens. The three weapons are usually described by tour guides as scimitars but they are actually seaxes, the notched sword of the Anglo-Saxon warrior.
They also appear on the arms of Essex. The shield is surrounded by a luxuriant growth of oak, the tree of Middlesex, and laurel.

219 Oxford Street W1

The Festival of Britain spawned a mass of art, music and literature, but nothing as curious as these three plaques on an anonymous shop/office block in Oxford Street.

The architects, Ronald Ward and Partners, clearly felt the need to acknowledge the Festival even though they were not involved and Oxford Street is miles away from the site. Perhaps they wanted to associate the building with the sense of a new beginning that the Festival projected - 219 Oxford Street was apparently the first new commercial building to go up in London after war's end. Ironically, by the time it was complete most of the Festival buildings had already been cleared by the incoming Churchill government, which regarded them as too socialist.
According to City of Westminster archives the sculptor is unknown.
The plaques show (above) the Dome of Discovery and the Skylon, with a clutter of navigational paraphenalia; (middle) the Festival plaque by Abram Games with the date; and (below) the Festival Hall, the old shot tower with the curious 'radio beacon' that was put on top for the duration and a clutter of musical impedimenta.
I remember my father pointing out the shot tower as we walked over Hungerford Bridge on our way to a Robert Mayer Childrens' Concert about 1960, raging at the announcement it was to be demolished. It came down in 1961 to make way for the Queen Elizabeth Hall.