Sir, London is a strange place, and you must look with a keen eye, and stay in it a great while, before you will be a master of half its expedients.

Randal, Squire Randal’s Excursion round London

For the bookish, London is a book. For criminals, a map of opportunities. For unpapered immigrants, it is a nest of skinned eyes; sanctioned gunmen ready to blow your head off as you run for a train. When the city of distorting mirrors revealed itself, through its districts and discriminations, I discovered more about London’s past as a reworking of my own submerged history.

Iain Sinclair (b.1943), London: A City of Disappearances

London is a world by itself. We daily discover in it more new countries, and surprising singularities, than in all the universe besides.

Thomas Brown (1663-1704), Amusements Serious and Comical, Calculated for the Meridian of Londont

London is a world in itself … It contains within itself all that is gorgeous in wealth, and all that is squalid in poverty; all that is illustrious in knowledge, and all that is debased in ignorance; all that is beautiful in virtue, and all that is revolting in crime. Adequately to chronicle and to describe such a city … is a task beyond any individual powers.

Charles Knight (1791-1873), The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.

Arthur Symons (1865-1945), Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands