Private courts, / Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes / Thrilled by some female vendor’s scream, belike / The very shrillest of all London cries, / May then entangle our impatient steps; / Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, / To privileged regions and inviolate, / Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers / Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

William Wordsworth (1779-1850), The Prelude

London is the clearing-house of the world.

Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), speech at Guildhall, 19th January, 1904

[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic . . . One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings.

V. S. Pritchett (1900-1997), London Perceived

London’s like a black-browed brute that gets an unholy influence over you.

Robert Smythe Hichens (1864-1950), The Woman with the Fan

You know what London’s like on Sunday? About as lively as a wet night at Stonehenge.

Richard Gordon (1921-2017), Nuts in May