How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It...

I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as ‘Abu Nidal’ (‘father of struggle’), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat’s main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when...

I lived in London for eight years and I like to say that I am two parts American and one part British because I lived there for a third of my life.

I don’t know if there is actually more rain here in England, or if it was just that the rain seemed to be so deliberately annoying. Every drop hit the window with a peevish “Am...

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful...

In their final testament, the heroic brothers in the London attacks provided great lessons to the Islamic nation and Muslims in Pakistan to oppose the infidels.

You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme,...

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

London was a city of ghosts, some deader than others. Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn’t unlike any other major city – New York or Paris or Sydney – but he felt instinctively...

Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who all go under the general appelation of Rooks. Here are all the Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-walkers, Whores, Linnen-lifters,...

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of...

The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.

London is the most multicultural, mixed-race place on Earth.

They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug

There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.

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.

I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward’s health had anything to do with this, and I don’t say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him ‘on his deathbed.’...

Relations are really good right now. Maybe the bombings in Madrid and London have brought the two continents together.

English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.

Never patronize your readers. That means don’t talk down to them.

I loved being in London. Always walking everywhere, always out and about and always at markets, walking around Brick Lane and Covent Garden and Soho.

6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,and I still don’t know which month it was thenor what day it is now.Blurred out linesfrom hangovers to coffeeAnother vagabond lost to love.4am alone and on my way.These are...

Day 72I remember oranges and you don’t mind me leaving the queue momentarily to find some. When you say, Of course, you reach for my arm in sympathy and recognition. This may be the thing...

One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you...

Words cannot do justice to the pleasures of a good bookshop. Ironically.(Waterstones Trafalgar Square)

Meanwhile, we have carved out a place for ourselves among the dead; the glittering pinnacles of commerce rise along the skyline, their foundations sunk in a charnel house; and the lost lie forgotten below us...

If you aren’t paranoid before you arrive in this city, give it a few weeks and you will soon notice it creeping in, dripping into your subconscious like a leaky tap. The trick is not...

I’ve started to hate this city, this country, all these STUPID FUCKING PEOPLE.

I don’t know what London’s coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.

I loved London. In the 1970s… it was very exciting, really wild.

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.

We’ve got really great story here in New London. We should tell it.

Finally, there’s a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.

London was one of the worst places to have a bad day and one of the best places to have a good day

I will try to win the Olympics gold in London.

In my own shire, if I was sadHomely comforters I had:The earth, because my heart was sore,Sorrowed for the son she bore;And standing hills, long to remain,Shared their short-lived comrade’s pain.And bound for the same...

I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me...

And marbled clouds go scudding byThe many-steepled London sky.

From the top of the bus she could see the vast bowl of London spreading out to the horizon: splendid shops with mannequins in the window, interesting people and already a much bigger world.

When you’re depressed you retreat and you go into a smaller world. This is why Brighton worked well for the story, because it’s a smaller world than London.

Italians give their city sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London’s middle-aged and male, respectably married...

You can see the people who thought they could come to London, bend over and pick gold off the streets. They’re all lying on benches in Trafalgar Square with hernias and cans of Special Brew.

During my stay in London I resided for a considerable time in Clapham Road in the neighbourhood of Clapham Common… One fine summer evening I was returning by the last bus ‘outside’ as usual, through...

The morning has broken – I had thought of the morning like an egg that had split with a crack and was spreading. Before us lay all the green of the green country of England,...

Peter Hall was just organizing the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as...

‘The Globe’ is one of the most terrifying theatres in London. It’s that mob element – everyone packed in and staring up at you.

Italy and London are the only places where I don’t feel to exist on sufferance.

In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you...

I liked the idea of a person shedding their life, and someone else putting it on. -Oliver Harris on writing The Hollow Man for Crime Time online magazine

She’d first seen Covent Garden after a heavy snow, walking with her hand in Win’s, and she remembers the secret silence of London then, the amazing hush of it, slush crunching beneath her feet and...