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London was a brand-new Roman city. Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome III, BBC 2016
London’s inner City is also a privately owned corporation or city state, located right smack in the heart of Greater London. It became a sovereign state in 1694 when King William III of Orange privatised and turned the Bank of England over to the bankers. By 1812 Nathan Rothschild crashed the English stock market and scammed control of the Bank of England. Today the city state of London is the world’s financial power centre and the wealthiest square mile on the face of the Earth. Ring of Power, 2008
London Bridge is falling down
My fair lady. London Bridge is Falling Down, nursery rhyme
A foggy day in London Town. Ira Gershwin, song covered by Petula Clark & Frank Sinatra et al
Perhaps nowhere is the history of a city, indeed a nation, its royalty, and its river, so intimately entwined as in the saga of London’s great waterway the Thames. Now a new exhibition here at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich called Royal Rivers sets out to explore that story. Tim Marlow on Royal River with David Starkey
Anne Boleyn: hundreds perhaps thousands of vessels ... This extraordinary combination of pomp, circumstance and near absurdity. ibid.
The City of London itself held an annual Lord Mayor’s procession on the river. ibid.
The Victorians also set about constructing new ways to cross the river. ibid.
As a student in London, I had seen so many shows, so many plays and had seen so many greats of the day. David Naughton
Hitler bombed London into submission but in fact it created a sense of national solidarity. Tom Paulin
I think London’s sexy because it is so full of eccentrics. Rachel Weisz
This glorious cittie, full of stink and darknesse. John Evelyn, 1661
Ten thousand houses all in one flame – the noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses and churches was like a hideous storm. London was but is no more. John Evelyn
This is the story of London in the seventeenth century, one of the most dramatic periods in Britain’s history illuminated through two remarkable surveys. The first, a labour of love, was produced by London Chronicler [John Stow]; he created a detailed account recording not just London’s buildings and businesses but its character. The second written over a hundred years later took the original work and updated it. The changes documented in these surveys reveal the origins of the phenomenal city London was to become. The first survey of John Stow. Dan Cruickshank, London: A Tale of Two Cities, BBC 2012
Stow walked every street ... A medieval city on the brink of change ... Home to just 200,000 people. ibid.
London grew from a small medieval city into a vast sprawling wealthy metropolis. Indeed, one of the greatest trading cities in the world. ibid.
In Stow’s survey he mourns the loss of open fields to the east. ibid.
Great number of edifices were erected in the suburbs. ibid.
Between Richmond and the North Sea thirty bridges span the Thames. They carry people across a stretch of river thirty-five miles long. Don Cruickshank, The Bridges That Built London, BBC 2012
These extraordinary structures have been the making of London. ibid.
Vauxhall – here in 1,500 B.C. before Troy fell and long before Julius Caesar came to Britain the people of the marshes made a first attempt at a crossing. ibid.
The Thames is like the River Jordan. ibid.
The river bed is changing all the time ... in truth very shallow. ibid.
Bridges were sacred things, things of religion. ibid.
London Bridge is the most famous. ibid.
For six hundred years London Bridge dominated the City. ibid.
The river regularly froze over. ibid.
The Watermen were a very powerful lobby indeed. ibid.
Between 1750 and 1850 nine bridges were thrown across the Thames. ibid.
We call it the Little Ice Age ... Cold enough to freeze the River Thames in London. Man on Earth with Tony Robinson III: Killer Climate, Channel 4 2009
A short stretch, barely eight miles, but it packs a punch like no other: because I’m walking through the heart of the capital. ibid.
The rise and fall of the tidal Thames can be as much as 23 feet. ibid.
It is the shortest river in the world to have acquired such a famous history ... But none of them has arrested the attention of the world of poets and novelists and artists and historians in the manor of the River Thames. This is the story of the life and death of civilisations. It is the story of culture and geology shaping one another. It is the story of myth interwoven with history. The river embodies the history of the nation. Peter Ackroyd’s Thames 1/4, ITV 2008
The Thames and the Rhine were once one river. ibid.
London could never have existed without the Thames. ibid.
London was chosen to be a city because the river ran through this particular stretch of land. ibid.
The Normans did the most to alter the appearance of the River. ibid.
The Thames was seen as the microcosm of the nation, a potent symbol of past and present running within each other. It was liquid history. ibid.
On this historic river everyone is equal. ibid.
This is a sacred river. There are more than fifty churches and chapels along its banks dedicated to Mary, who can truly be hailed as the goddess of the river. ibid.
It has always been a river of art. In the Tudor period the Thames became the river of magnificence. Peter Ackroyd’s Thames 2/4
It was the Theatre of Water. ibid.
Turner lived by the Thames all his life. He was born in Maiden Lane just off the Strand in 1775 and as a child he wandered beside the barges and sailboats a hundred yards from his door. He died by the river in the Bankside residence of Chelsea. By the banks of the Thames he began his art. And by the banks of the Thames he finished his life. He loved the river. ibid.
The luminous quality of his paintings has often been remarked. And it is possible that his early experience of river light helped to form his mature sensibility. His watercolour sketches of the river look as if they have been imbued with the light of the Thames, as if the water has washed over the paper and left its radiance there. ibid.