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Continued:
The
aromas of these various cultures permeate neighborhoods such as Soho, Mayfair,
Marylebone, Piccadilly Circus, Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Kensington, Chelsea,
Notting Hill, Bayswater, all in the West End and beyond, and in the East
End part of London where Cockneys rhyme and the immigrants arrive. Over
a third of London’s
permanent population originates overseas. And even more unBritish is the
fact that very soon someone will actually run London because it finally
wants a mayor. London, with its exquisite conglomeration, along with all
the arts, the parks, the museums, the squares, the churches, the history,
the music, the book shops, the pubs, and the self-possession, and a certain
hauteur by being in London as opposed to the provinces (always the hauteur)--the
conglomeration encrusted in a certain timelessness that is always here.
London is Europe’s
biggest city, spreading over an area of more than 620 square miles from
its core on the River Thames. And it is crowded, beautiful, tumultuous,
sometimes dirty, maddening, extreme, spectacular, manifold, enchanting,
insatiable, exhilarating. And what is so seductive about the city, beside
its infinite dazzling landmarks, Roman ruins, and Baroque churches, is its
quiet squares (Samuel Johnson’s
own Gough Square is particularly bewitching), narrow alleyways, the parks,
vast and dreamy areas swathed in greenery, and the joyful surprises, such
as coming upon distinctive blue plaques on the houses of famous people who
once lived here. The Romans founded Londinium in 43 AD as a stores depot
on the marshy banks of the Thames. London’s
growth began in the 11th century, when it became the seat of the last successful
invader of Britain, the Norman duke who became William I of England (“The
Conqueror”).
The first king of England to be crowned in Westminster Abbey, William built
the White Tower, heart of the Tower of London, to establish his control
over the merchant population, the class that was soon to make London one
of the Europe’s
most dominant cities. Take a plunge into London’s
endless magisterial moonings, past, present, and future. Conjure up the
London of Shakespeare and Dickens, of Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury
Group, nicknamed Bloomsberries, whom she described in 1930 as “merely
wild, odd, innocent, artless, eccentric and industrious beyond words.”
As is London in all its magnificence. |
