Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew – / Wanted to know what the River knew, Twenty Bridges or twenty-two, / For they were young, and the Thames was old / And this is the tale that River told.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), The River’s Tale

On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes, / the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes. / I wipe them away with a black woolly glove / And try not to notice I’ve fallen in love.

Wendy Cope (b.1945), Serious Concerns

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; . . . And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Bleak House

Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I