A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…there was no Mayor of London, Greater London Authority or City Hall. Bankside Power Station was just about to be re-born as the Tate Modern. The year was 2000, and I was teaching and researching at the London School of Economics. Together with my colleague Tony Travers, I became involved in an exhibition in the Oxo Tower, called “Our London, Our Vote” . The purpose of the exhibition was to help explain to Londoners what the role would be of the new Mayor and London Assembly, to be elected that May. As part of the exhibition, I put together some quotations about London for one of the display panels – quotations not from politicians and public officials but from writers, artists, poets.
Here they are below:
London “is an idea, almost a metaphysical entity in the minds of those who contemplate it” A.N.Wilson
“We do well perceive in our princely wisdom that our City of London is become the greatest, or next the greatest City of the Christian World.” King James I, 1615.
“When I was a child in Trinidad, the wharves were lined with cargo boats coming from and heading to the London docks. The clothes we wore, much of the food we ate, all the luxuries of life we associated with London” Darcus Howe, journalist.
“Rain grey town/known for its sound/In places/small faces/abound” The Byrds, Eight Miles High
“Unreal city/Under the brown fog of a winter dawn/A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many/I had not thought death had undone so many” T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land
“It is odd how one imagines that just because the sun is shining in London, it is shining everywhere else” Hanif Kureishi
“Hell is a city much like London/A populous and smoky city” Shelley
“If I had to sum up for you what London seems to me, it’s a community of unpaid extras in the most expensive theme park on the planet” Malcolm McLaren
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