Invariably, as well, every time I visit it, I experience a powerful feeling of being liberated. I know you’re already thinking that I feel being liberated from Manchester, but it’s not true. I still like Manchester a lot, not least because, as I said many times, I don’t suffer from hay fever in the North West. I don’t exactly suffer from it in London, but I do have to take medication.
This feeling of freedom comes simply from the fact that London possesses much more space than Manchester. It is the fact, and there is little sense to try and pretend that the vastness and grandeur of London can be substituted for something else. It can’t, and it will never be. London is not a desert, it’s the same kind of city of steel, and concrete, and brick, like Manchester, and indeed, like many other modern cities. It is its space that people like me love and miss. More than that, it is the space in the city centre that I personally miss a lot.
With me, it all comes from personal experience, of course. In Moscow, I used to lose myself in those endless serpentine boulevards, just strolling down old slopy streets with buildings of different periods and colours, or walking across bridges, stumbling accidentally into previously unnoticed little architectural gems, or revisiting the places that I have long discovered and fallen in love with. Moscow, in a way, is like Venice in Henry James’s Italian Hours that I am currently reading. So much has become known about it since the uplift of the Iron Curtain, so many people have visited it and are planning to visit in future, that it is hardly possible to say something totally new.
Same goes for London. But the fact that all hidden gems of this city have already been discovered and categorised doesn’t diminish the allure of the place. I most certainly don’t feel intimidated by it. The reason why I like going there and why now I am writing about it is the same that made James write about Venice, as he explains in this short introduction to the chapter on his reflections on this city.
It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure
there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything
to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of
times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to
visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find
a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer's and
you will find three or four high-coloured "views" of it. There
is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one
has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of
photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as
about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as
familiar as the postman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to
speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice-
lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said
about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It
would be a sad day indeed when there should be something new to
say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having
no information whatever to offer. I do not pretend to enlighten
the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I
hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love
with his theme.
Henry James, Italian Hours (a full text at Project Gutenberg).
Unless you have already read it, this book by the late Prof Roy Porter is a great introduction to the history of London’s growth. I bought London: A Social History back in 2002, at Waterstones in either Bolton or Blackpool, and it was one of the most interesting semi-academic readings I’ve ever come across. The rich vocabulary of a Londoner who also happened to be a seasoned and versatile academic made up for a vivid and engaging reconstruction of London’s history from the times immemorial to the present day. It doesn’t contain many illustrations, and those that were included in the book are black-and-white. But I shall once more underline his style and language; together, they provide you with all colours and detail you need to paint a picture of London’s history.