{Tt is an ugly, higgleely-piggleely mess of 'a city, Over 700 square miles of clay It sprawls, "an unnatural, drear growth with here. and there- an apologetic relic of medieval richness or Georgian grace. The place straggles without plan, order or reason, has every fault the civilized mind can '"shoggle at. 'A fifth of the country's popula-tron. crammed into an immensity of ttle But first the outside world, then Britons, and at length the surprised Londoner him-selt has realized. that he and his city are "the focus of history. In the imagination of the free peoples this agglomeration is a "shining, walled citadel. London has a soul, and the world again sees a glory about it. How do'London's citizens wear their mantle of glory? With less show than if the kitchen tap needed.a new washer.
Ironclad against emotion, the Londoner's humour is an astonishing fusion of understatement, inversion and tortuous negatives. His classical retort "Not arf {t ain't" bears all hose qualities. Thai mother, now. Business chalked sign outside a bombed boot repairer'
half-wrecked business house pyrs up. a notice "Staff.wanted. No window-cleaners need apply." "I'm house-hunting" gently @zplains a man whose home is a pile of rubble, and a brother-Londoner greets the morning with "Nice drop of rain, It'll lay' the shrapnel."
Through the night of flaming fury the lorry-driver moodily brings his load of food to London's markets. The butcher's boy whistles his bike around under the grunting Heinkel, and the milkman clatters amid the shrapnel of the dawn. At 10 o'clock each night a 70-year-old porter of a Bloomsbury block of flats goes through bombs and shells to his home at Kentish Town to feed his eat Peter. How in the world can a Germa cope with such a man? One Nazi thought "he had made a fine dent in London's "dropping a bomb on Lambeth Bomb Lambeth Walk! As well try to knock "em in the Old Kent Road. Or deliver an uppercut at a punch ball, From King John they won, not only his signature to the Charter, but London's right to elect its own Mayor. Alan lo Hurer, capmaker, Bartholomew the Spicer, Walter the Potter supplanted Royal nominees as first citizen. Craftsmen and traders formed them= ves into potent guilds to gird their callings with protection; crafts became closed shops, wages were regularized and bad work punished. In their hands lay the choice of mayors. Rising to tremendous power, thes City Companies then dwindled with the Industrial Revolution into their present decora~ tive unimportance, But their blood was the seed of the great trade unions of the 20th In a chapel of Westminster Abbey Caxton set up England's first printing-press in 1477. Three hundred years later it fell to John Wilkes, the ribald and cross-eyed son of a Clerkenwell distiller, to win freedom for the Press in 20 years of spectacular struggle against a corrupt Parliament of "pocket boroughs." For attacking the King's Speech in his malevolent journal the "North Briton," Watkes was thrown into the Tower by the Government. With a study appeal to the courts he got his liberty and heavy damages. Next the Government declared the reporting of Parliamentary debates a breach of privilege, summoned the printers of two Papers. Wilkes, as Alderman and magistrate, again played his part. The King, appealed to by his furious Ministers, exclaimed "I will have no more to do with that devil Wilkes." Never since them has an attempt been ma to stop the reporting of Westminister's debates, Tt was John Burns, Britain's frst workingman Cabinet Minister, who stood on the Commons' Terrace, gazed on the river and said "I's liquid history." The meandering, full-brimmed Thames gave London its life. Ideal waterway for trade with the Continent, it conveniently narrowed here, and twin hills (Cornhill and Tower Hill) rose from the marshy banks to invite a permanent halt, There was certainly a settlement of sorts before the Romans. James I was angry with the City Corporation for refusing him a Joan, threatened to take his Court away from London, Memorably the Lord Mayor replied "Your Majesty hath power to do what you please, and your City of London will obey accordingly, But she humbly desires that when your Majesty shall remove your Court, you would please to leave the Thames behind you." Today war has wooed Londoners back to their waterway; the new river buses are @ throwback to the Middle Ages when fleets of barges, thousands of ferries, tiltboats and wherries formed London Transport. A primitive trackway climbed over the Kentish Downs from the coast, crossed the Thames by Westminster horse-ferry, and wandered on to Colchester, when Rome's! Jegions came with a terrifying squadron of elephants, to conquer this northwest corer began, The masterful invaders made stately fortress-city of it, ringed it with a 25tt. wall. of ragstone and brick, built the 'first bridge. Now a long black night fell on. London.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.