This deserves to be published somewhere with a broad mainstream audience... just to remind today's discouraged Londoners what they have to be proud of, and what is worth preserving.
Beautiful! Expresses what the Welsh call ‘hiraeth.’ But, though you can take the boy out of London, you can’t take London out of the boy. All the very best for the US, and thanks for everything!
Breathtaking. I feel privileged to have been able to read this masterpiece. Today marks 44 years since the death of Alan Lascelles so fitting to read his part in your London landscape.
I wish you all the best of luck on your next chapter.
This is so lovely. To mark the appreciations when so many see only the dark and distressing is a breath of fresh air. The Great City will still be there when you come back - waiting.
This is fabulous, Henry; you should write a literary guide book for visitors to the city. I do feel bound to say that crime in London is decreasing - certainly since the 90s. The city is as safe as it has ever been in my lifetime.
I've never been to London but this makes me want to go so badly! Having conceptualized these places only through the great tradition of English literature, I'm so curious to see what they're actually like in real life.
Thank you for reminding me how much I love London. Although not a residence I’ve been visiting London since I was 10 and I feel more at home there than I do almost anywhere else in the world. It changes, but it lives and goes on. DC, where I lived off and on for a long time, is…. different.
This deserves to be published somewhere with a broad mainstream audience... just to remind today's discouraged Londoners what they have to be proud of, and what is worth preserving.
Oh thank you :)
Beautiful! Expresses what the Welsh call ‘hiraeth.’ But, though you can take the boy out of London, you can’t take London out of the boy. All the very best for the US, and thanks for everything!
Thank you :) (I am a little Welsh in fact)
Cockney feet
Mark the beat of history
Every street pins a memory down
Nothing ever can quite replace
The grace of London Town
Noel Coward, London Pride
Breathtaking. I feel privileged to have been able to read this masterpiece. Today marks 44 years since the death of Alan Lascelles so fitting to read his part in your London landscape.
I wish you all the best of luck on your next chapter.
As a DC resident, I fear you’re going to be…disappointed after your move.
I’ll find plenty to like :)
What a loveletter.
This is so lovely. To mark the appreciations when so many see only the dark and distressing is a breath of fresh air. The Great City will still be there when you come back - waiting.
yes it will :)
Absolutely wonderful.
Fair comment! Good luck in the US. I hope that we will see the results of your work in some form or other!
You'd better come back!
This is fabulous, Henry; you should write a literary guide book for visitors to the city. I do feel bound to say that crime in London is decreasing - certainly since the 90s. The city is as safe as it has ever been in my lifetime.
oh I agree about crime yes, but the hotspots are a concern. A London guidebook is one of my secret ambitions!
I've never been to London but this makes me want to go so badly! Having conceptualized these places only through the great tradition of English literature, I'm so curious to see what they're actually like in real life.
If I was living abroad and read this it would certainly move me to tears. What a glorious tribute to a great city.
Plenty of Ben Franklin where you are going, for what it's worth. Enjoy!
Oh yeah can’t wait
Thank you for reminding me how much I love London. Although not a residence I’ve been visiting London since I was 10 and I feel more at home there than I do almost anywhere else in the world. It changes, but it lives and goes on. DC, where I lived off and on for a long time, is…. different.
So I hear…
I love London, and this is such a lovely piece about the city!
:) same