#london

I was born in London, England, in 1938, a few months before the war, and spent the first years of my life there, although I was evacuated a couple of times for short periods. My schooling was very interrupted, both by frequent moves and by ill health. ↗

— Anne Perry

#before #born #both #couple #england

And I had known Peter O'Toole before in London. And I'd liked him very much. And the thought of being in a picture with him was very challenging to me. And he was playing the starring role. ↗

— Anthony Quinn

#being #challenging #had #him #i

The only problem in the past has been my kids. I'd want to bring them to London with me, but they are at an important stage in high school. ↗

— Mimi Rogers

#bring #high #high school #i #important

I love going into the centre of London because people don't give a monkey's about you or who you are. You can be in a restaurant and no one notices you or if they do they won't show it. ↗

— Teddy Sheringham

#because #centre #give #going #i

Even if a university should turn out to be another version of a school, I had decided I could lose myself afterwards as an anonymous particle of the London I already loved. ↗

— Patrick White

#already #anonymous #another #could #decided

Because it is the triumph of a lack of planning –both for good and bad. It's chaos –and whether you say that with a gasp of despair or glee or both is up to you. Whereas Paris (certainly in the centre) is the success of a single overarching monomaniacal topographic vision, London is a chaotic patchwork of history, architecture, style, as disorganised as any dream, and like any dream possessing an underlying logic, but one that we can't quite make sense of, though we know it's there. A shoved-together city cobbled from centuries of distinct aesthetics disrespectfully clotted in a magnificent triumph of architectural philistinism. A city of jingoist sculptures, concrete caryatids, ugly ugly ugly financial bombast, reconfiguration. A city full of parks and gardens, which have always been magic places, one of the greenest cities in the world, though it's a very dirty shade of green –and what sort of grimy dryads does London throw up? You tell me. ↗

— China Miéville

#architecture

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#beautiful #countryside #experience #john-watson #london

It's barely changed since the faceless colour committee originally selected it in 1908 when the first map of the Underground was designed and the Bakerloo conclusively became brown, a very early twentieth-century brown, which brings something of the nineteenth century with it - the colour of Sherlock Holmes's pipe, a Gladstone bag, a grandfather clock. ↗

— Paul Morley

#brown #gladstone-bag #london-underground #sherlock-holmes #change

I've often thought a blind man could find his way through London simply by gauging the changes in innuendo: mild through Trafalgar Square, less veiled towards the river. ↗

— Louis Bayard

#prostitution #victorian-era #change

Handel's yearning for independence from the traditional chains of patronage and his persistence in monitoring his productions resulted with unique developments concerning Baroque 'opera seria'; however, paradoxically his personal obsession to obtain complete artistic freedom generated disastrous side-effects that eventually impeded the progress of opera in London. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#classical-music #composers #covent-garden #handel #london