I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the City far better . . . The City is getting its living – the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West End you may be amused; but in the City you are deeply excited.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1856), Villette

Like the majority of London people, she occupied a house of which the rent absurdly exceeded the due proportion of her income, a pleasant foible turned to such good account by London landlords.

George Gissing (1857-1903)

London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow / At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore / Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. / Yet in its depths what treasures!

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Earth, yet it is governed with the same Ease, and with less Trouble to the Subject, than many petty Villages in other Parts of the World.

Robert Campbell (1769–1846)

It really is an insane city . . . its intelligentsia is so hurried in the head that nothing stays there; its glamour smells of goat; there’s no difference between good and bad.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)