So all that great foul city of London there, – rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, – a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork pouring out poison at every pore . . . you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play and very hard play, but still play.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

London; a nation, not a city.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Gin . . . is the principal Sustenance (if it may be so called) of more than an hundred thousand People in this Metropolis.

Henry Fielding (1708-1754)

Sir, the spirits which I have in London make me do every thing with more readiness and vigour. I can talk twice as much in London as any where else.

James Boswell (1740-1795)

How London doth pour out her citizens.

William Shakespeare (1567-1616), Henry V