Flying in a helicopter along the Thames, Stephen Wiltshire memorised the appearance and position of hundreds of London's buildings. Over the next five days he drew the panorama in fine detail on a 13ft curving canvas, never referring to notes, sketches or photographs. All buildings were drawn to scale and in position, with the precise number of floors and other structural features included on landmarks such as the Swiss Re tower, known as the Gherkin, and Canary Wharf.









Stephen Wiltshire has been called the "Human Camera." In this short excerpt from the film Beautiful Minds: A Voyage into the Brain, Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory.