Gin Fizz

The subject is London. It is not that I have any strong desire to write about London, but everybody else seems to be doing it and I don’t want to be left out of the act.

London has had a pretty good press from the poets in the past. Dunbar called it “the flower of cities all,” and as Dunbar was a Scotsman living at a time when Anglo-Scottish relations were worse than strained, I think this handsome testimonial does equal credit to himself and the city. “Merry London my most kindly nurse” is a properly filial reference from Spenser. Even Wordsworth said, “Earth hath not anything to show more fair” than the view from Westminster Bridge. (He should see it today.) It must be admitted that Shelley was a knocker. He said, “Hell is a city much like London.” Definitely not a compliment, but then, who was Shelley? A man so devoid of prudence, so wantonly defiant of the manifest and unalterable laws of God that he was caught whistling in an Edinburgh street on a Sunday. No wonder he was expelled from Eton three times.

CB

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Colm Brogan

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The subject is London. It is not that I have any strong desire to write about London, but everybody else seems to be doing it and I don’t want to be left out of the act.

London has had a pretty good press from the poets in the past. Dunbar called it “the flower of cities all,” and as Dunbar was a Scotsman living at a time when Anglo-Scottish relations were worse than strained, I think this handsome testimonial does equal credit to himself and the city. “Merry London my most kindly nurse” is a properly filial reference from Spenser. Even Wordsworth said, “Earth hath not anything to show more fair” than the view from Westminster Bridge. (He should see it today.) It must be admitted that Shelley was a knocker. He said, “Hell is a city much like London.” Definitely not a compliment, but then, who was Shelley? A man so devoid of prudence, so wantonly defiant of the manifest and unalterable laws of God that he was caught whistling in an Edinburgh street on a Sunday. No wonder he was expelled from Eton three times.