We saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame . . . It made me weep to see it.

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), Diary 2nd September 1666

Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London, Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit . . . Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians, tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the British Body Politic.

John Galsworthy (1867-1933), The Forsythe Saga

London, the Metropolis of Great-Britain, has been complained of, for Ages past, as a Kind of Monster, with a Head enormously large, and out of all Proportion to its Body.

Josiah Tucker (1712-1799)

A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint which could lead to the inference that there is open country within reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this heaping together of two and a half millions of human beings at one point, has multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundredfold; has raised London to the commercial capital of the world . . .

Frederick Engels (1820-1895), Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845

The City is the Centre of its Commerce and Wealth. The Court of its Gallantry and Splendor. The Out-parts of its Numbers and Mechanicks; and in all these, no City in the World can equal it.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), Vision of Britain Letter 5 (London), Part 2: The City